THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 


•f 


ARTHUR  STRINGER 


PRAIRIE  STORIES 

Containing 

THE  PRAIRIE  WIFE 

THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

THE  PRAIRIE  CHILD 


A.  L.  BURT  COMPANY,  Publishers 
NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 


'THE  PRAIRIE  WIFE 

Copyright,  1915 
THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1915 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

Copyright,  1920 
THE  PICTORIAL  REVIEW  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1920 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 


THE  PRAIRIE  CHILD 

Copyright,  1922 
THE  PICTORIAL  REVIEW  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1922 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


THE  PRAIRIE  WIFE 


TO  VAN 
WHO  KNOWS  AND  LOVES 

THE  WEST 
AS  WE  LOVE  HIM  ! 


THE  PRAIRIE  WIFE 

Thursday  the  Nineteenth 

SPLASH!  .  .  .  That's  me,  Matilda  Anne !  That's 
me  falling  plump  into  the  pool  of  matrimony  before 
I've  had  time  to  fall  in  love!  And  oh,  Matilda 
Anne,  Matilda  Anne,  I've  got  to  talk  to  you !  You 
may  be  six  thousand  miles  away,  but  still  you've 
got  to  be  my  safety-valve.  I'd  blow  up  and  explode 
if  I  didn't  express  myself  to  some  one.  For  it's 
so  lonesome  out  here  I  could  go  and  commune  with 
the  gophers.  This  isn't  a  twenty-part  letter,  my 
dear,  and  it  isn't  a  diary.  It's  the  coral  ring  I'm 
cutting  my  teeth  of  desolation  on.  For,  every  so 
long,  I've  simply  got  to  sit  down  and  talk  to  some 
one,  or  I'd  go  mad,  clean,  stark,  staring  mad,  and 
bite  the  tops  off  the  sweet-grass !  It  may  even  hap 
pen  this  will  never  be  sent  to  you.  But  I  like  to 
think  of  you  reading  it,  some  day,  page  by  page, 

1 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

when  I'm  fat  and  forty,  or,  what's  more  likely, 
when  Duncan  has  me  chained  to  a  corral-post  or 
finally  shut  up  in  a  padded  cell.  For  you  were  the 
one  who  was  closest  to  me  in  the  old  days,  Matilda 
Anne,  and  when  I  was  in  trouble  you  were  always 
the  staff  on  which  I  leaned,  the  calm-eyed  Tillie- 
on-the-spot  who  never  seemed  to  fail  me!  And  I 
think  you  will  understand. 

But  there's  so  much  to  talk  about  I  scarcely  know 
where  to  begin.  The  funny  part  of  it  all  is,  I've 
gone  and  married  the  Other  Man.  And  you  won't 
understand  that  a  bit,  unless  I  start  at  the  begin 
ning.  But  when  I  look  back,  there  doesn't  seem 
to  be  any  beginning,  for  it's  only  in  books  that 
things  really  begin  and  end  in  a  single  lifetime. 

Howsomever,  as  Chinkie  used  to  say,  when  I  left 
you  and  Scheming  Jack  in  that  funny  little  stone 
house  of  yours  in  Corfu,  and  got  to  Palermo,  1 
found  Lady  Agatha  and  Chinkie  there  at  the  Hotel 
des  Palmes  and  the  yacht  being  coaled  from  a  tramp 
steamer's  bunkers  in  the  harbor.  So  I  went  on 
with  them  to  Monte  Carlo.  We  had  a  terrible  trip 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

all  the  way  up  to  the  Riviera,  and  I  was  terribly 
sea-sick,  and  those  lady  novelists  who  love  to  get 
their  heroines  off  on  a  private  yacht  never  dream 
that  in  anything  but  duckpond  weather  the  or 
dinary  yacht  at  sea  is  about  the  meanest  habita 
tion  between  Heaven  and  earth.  But  it  was  at 
Monte  Carlo  I  got  the  cable  from  Uncle  Carlton 
telling  me  the  Chilean  revolution  had  wiped  out 
our  nitrate  mine  concessions  and  that  your  poor 
Tabby's  last  little  nest-egg  had  been  smashed.  ID 
other  words,  I  woke  up  and  found  myself  a  beg 
gar,  and  for  a  few  hours  I  even  thought  I'd  have 
to  travel  home  on  that  Monte  Carlo  Viaticum  fund 
which  so  discreetly  ships  away  the  stranded  adven 
turer  before  he  musses  up  the  Mediterranean  scen 
ery  by  shooting  himself.  Then  I  remembered  my 
letter  of  credit,  and  firmly  but  sorrowfully  paid 
off  poor  Hortense,  who  through  her  tears  pro 
claimed  that  she'd  go  with  me  anywhere,  and  with 
out  any  thought  of  wages  (imagine  being  hooked 
up  by  a  maid  to  whom  you  were  under  such  democ 
ratizing  obligations !)  But  I  was  firm,  for  I  knew 

3 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

the   situation   might  just   as   well  be   faced   first 
as  last. 

So  I  counted  up  my  letter  of  credit  and  found 
I  had  exactly  six  hundred  and  seventy-one  dollars, 
American  money,  between  me  and  beggary.  Then 
I  sent  a  cable  to  Theobald  Gustav  (so  condensed 
that  he  thought  it  was  code)  and  later  on  found 
that  he'd  been  sending  flowers  and  chocolates  all 
the  while  to  the  Hotel  de  L'Athenee,  the  long  boxes 
duly  piled  up  in  tiers,  like  coffins  at  the  morgue. 
Then  Theobald's  aunt,  the  baroness,  called  on  me, 
in  state.  She  came  in  that  funny,  old-fashioned, 
shallow  landau  of  hers,  where  she  looked  for  all 
the  world  like  an  oyster-on-the-half-shell,  and  spoke 
so  pointedly  of  the  danger  of  international  mar 
riages  that  I  felt  sure  she  was  trying  to  shoo  me 
away  from  my  handsome  and  kingly  Theobald 
Gustav — which  made  me  quite  calmly  and  solemnly 
tell  her  that  I  intended  to  take  Theobald  out  of 
under-secretary ships,  which  really  belonged  to  Op-  • 
penheim  romances,  and  put  him  in  the  shoe  busi 
ness  in  some  nice  New  England  town! 

4 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

From  Monte  Carlo  I  scooted  right  up  to  Paris. 
Two  days  later,  as  I  intended  to  write  you  but 
didn't,  I  caught  the  boat-train  for  Cherbourg.  And 
there  at  the  rail  as  I  stepped  on  the  Baltic  was  the 
Other  Man,  to  wit,  Duncan  Argyll  McKail,  in  a 
most  awful-looking  yellow  plaid  English  mackin 
tosh.  His  face  went  a  little  blank  as  he  clapped 
eyes  on  me,  for  he'd  dropped  up  to  Banff  last 
October  when  Chinkie  and  Lady  Agatha  and  I  were 
there  for  a  week.  He'd  been  very  nice,  that  week 
at  Banff,  and  I  liked  him  a  lot.  But  when  Chinkie 
saw  him  "going  it  a  bit  too  strong,"  as  he  put 
it,  and  quietly  tipped  Duncan  Argyll  off  as  to 
Theobald  Gustav,  the  aforesaid  D.  A.  bolted  back 
to  his  ranch  without  as  much  as  saying  good-by 
to  me.  For  Duncan  Argyll  McKail  isn't  an  Irish 
man,  as  you  might  in  time  gather  from  that  name 
of  his.  He's  a  Scotch-Canadian,  and  he's  nothing 
but  a  broken-down  civil  engineer  who's  taken  up 
farming  in  the  Northwest.  But  I  could  see  right 
away  that  he  was  a  gentleman  (I  hate  that  word, 
but  where'll  you  get  another  one  to  take  its  place?) 

5 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

and  had  known  nice  people,  even  before  I  found 
out  he'd  taught  the  Duchess  of  S.  to  shoot  big-horn. 
He'd  run  over  to  England  to  finance  a  cooperative 
wheat-growing  scheme,  but  had  failed,  because 
everything  is  so  unsettled  in  England  just  now. 

But  you're  a  woman,  and  before  I  go  any  fur 
ther  you'll  want  to  know  what  Duncan  looks  like. 

Well,  he's  not  a  bit  like  his  name.  The  West  has 
shaken  a  good  deal  of  the  Covenanter  out  of  him. 
He's  tall  and  gaunt  and  wide-shouldered,  and  has 
brown  eyes  with  hazel  specks  in  them,  and  a  mouth 
exactly  like  Holbein's  "Astronomer's,"  and  a  skin 
that  is  almost  as  disgracefully  brown  as  an  In 
dian's.  On  the  whole,  if  a  Lina  Cavalier!  had  hap 
pened  to  marry  a  Lord  Kitchener,  and  had  hap 
pened  to  have  a  thirty-year-old  son,  I  feel  quite 
sure  he'd  have  been  the  dead  spit,  as  the  Irish 
say,  of  my  own  Duncan  Argyll.  And  Duncan  Ar 
gyll,  alias  Dinky-Dunk,  is  rather  reserved  and 
quiet  and,  I'm  afraid,  rather  masterful,  but  not  as 
Theobald  Gustav  might  have  been,  for  with  all 
his  force  the  modern  German,  it  seems  to  me,  is 

6 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

like  the  bagpipes   in  being  somewhat  lacking  in 
suavity. 

And  all  the  way  over  Dinky-Dunk  was  so  nice 
that  he  almost  took  my  breath  away.  He  was  also 
rather  audacious,  gritting  his  teeth  in  the  face  of 
the  German  peril,  and  I  got  to  like  him  so  much 
I  secretly  decided  we'd  always  be  good  friends,  old- 
fashioned,  above-board,  Platonic  good  friends.  But 
the  trouble  with  Platonic  love  is  that  it's  always 
turning  out  too  nice  to  be  Platonic,  or  too  Platonic 
to  be  nice.  So  I  had  to  look  straight  at  the  bosom 
of  that  awful  yellow-plaid  English  mackintosh  and 
tell  Dinky-Dunk  the  truth.  And  Dinky-Dunk  lis 
tened,  with  his  astronomer  mouth  set  rather  grim, 
and  otherwise  not  in  the  least  put  out.  His  sense 
of  confidence  worried  me.  It  was  like  the  quietness 
of  the  man  who  is  holding  back  his  trump.  And 
it  wasn't  until  the  impossible  little  wife  of  an  im 
possible  big  lumberman  from  Saginaw,  Michigan, 
showed  me  the  Paris  Herald  with  the  cable  in 
it  about  that  spidery  Russian  stage-dancer, 
-,  getting  so  nearly  killed  in  Theobald*- 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

car  down  at  Long  Beach,  that  I  realized  there 

a  trump  card  and  that  Dinky-Dunk  had  been  toe 

manly  to  play  it. 

I  had  a  lot  of  thinking  to  do,  the  next  three  days. 

When  Theobald  came  on  from  Washington  and 
met  the  steamer  my  conscience  troubled  me  and  I 
should  still  have  been  kindness  itself  to  him,  if  it 
hadn't  been  for  his  proprietary  manner  (which,  by 
the  way,  had  never  annoyed  me  before),  coupled 
with  what  I  already  knew.  We  had  luncheon  in 
the  Delia  Robbia  room  at  the  Vanderbilt  and  I  was 
digging  the  marrons  out  of  a  Nesselrode  when, 
presto,  it  suddenly  came  over  me  that  the  baroness 
was  right  and  that  I  could  never  marry  a  foreigner. 
It  came  like  a  thunderclap.  But  somewhere  in  that 
senate  of  instinct  which  debates  over  such  things 
down  deep  in  the  secret  chambers  of  our  souls,  I 
suppose,  the  whole  problem  had  been  talked  over 
and  fought  out  and  put  to  the  vote.  And  in  the 
face  of  the  fact  that  Theobald  Gustav  had  always 
seemed  more  nearly  akin  to  one  of  Ouida's  demi 
gods  than  any  man  I  had  ever  known,  the  vote  had 

8 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

gone  against  him.  My  hero  was  no  longer  a  her<v 
1  knew  there  had  been  times,  of  course,  when  that 
hero,  being  a  German,  had  rather  regarded  this 
universe  of  ours  as  a  department-store  and  this 
earth  as  the  particular  section  over  which  the 
August  Master  had  appointed  him  floor-walker.  I 
had  thought  of  him  as  my  Eisenfresser  and  my  big 
blond  Saebierassler.  But  my  eyes  opened  with  my 
last  marron  and  I  suddenly  sat  back  and  stared 
at  Theobald's  handsome  pink  face  with  its  Krupp- 
steel  blue  eyes  and  its  haughtily  upturned  mus 
tache-ends.  He  must  have  seen  that  look  of  ap 
praisal  on  my  own  face,  for,  with  all  his  iron-and- 
blood  Prussianism,  he  clouded  up  like  a  hurt  child. 
But  he  was  too  much  of  a  diplomat  to  show  his 
feelings.  He  merely  became  so  unctuously  polite 
that  I  felt  like  poking  him  in  his  steel-blue  eye  with 
my  mint  straw. 

Remember,  Matilda  Anne,  not  a  word  was  said, 
not  one  syllable  about  what  was  there  in  both  our 
souls.  Yet  it  was  one  of  life's  biggest  moments,  the 
Great  Divide  of  a  whole  career — and  I  went  on  eat- 

9 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ing  Nesselrode  and  Theobald  went  on  pleasant*!/ 
smoking  his  cigarette  and  approvingly  inspecting 
his  well-manicured  nails. 

It  was  funny,  but  it  made  me  feel  blue  and  un 
attached  and  terribly  alone  in  the  world.  Now,  I 
can  see  things  more  clearly.  I  know  that  mood  of 
mine  was  not  the  mere  child  of  caprice.  Looking 
back,  I  can  see  how  Theobald  had  been  more  critical, 
more  silently  combative,  from  the  moment  I  stepped 
off  the  Baltic.  I  realized,  all  at  once,  that  he  had 
secretly  been  putting  me  to  a  strain.  I  won't  say 
it  was  because  my  dot  had  gone  with  The  Nitrate 
Mines,  or  that  he  had  discovered  that  Duncan  had 
crossed  on  the  same  steamer  with  me,  or  that  he 

knew  I'd  soon  hear  of  the  L episode.  But  these 

prophetic  bones  of  mine  told  me  there  was  trouble 
ahead.  And  I  felt  so  forsaken  and  desolate  in  spirit 
that  when  Duncan  whirled  me  out  to  Westbury,  in 
a  hired  motor-car,  to  see  the  Great  Neck  First  de 
feated  by  the  Meadow  Brook  Hunters,  I  went  with 
the  happy-go-lucky  glee  of  a  truant  who  doesn't 
give  a  hang  what  happens.  Dinky-Dunk  was  in- 
If 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

terested  in  polo  ponies,  which,  he  explained  to  me, 
are  not  a  particular  breed  but  just  come  along  by 
accident — for  he'd  bred  and  sold  mounts  to  the  Cor- 
onado  and  San  Mateo  Clubs  and  the  Philadelphia 
City  Cavalry  boys.  And  he  loved^  the  game.  He 
was  so  genuine  and  sincere  and  human,  as  we  sat 
there  side  by  side,  that  I  wasn't  a  bit  afraid  of  him 
and  knew  we  could  be  chums  and  didn't  mind  his 
lapses  into  silence  or  his  extension-sole  English 
shoes  and  crazy  London  cravat. 

And  I  was  happy,  until  the  school-bell  rang — 
which  took  the  form  of  Theobald's  telephone  mes 
sage  to  the  Ritz  reminding  me  of  our  dinner  en 
gagement.  It  was  an  awful  dinner,  for  intuitively 
I  knew  what  was  coming,  and  quite  as  intuitively  he 
knew  what  was  coming,  and  even  the  waiter  knew 
when  it  came, — for  I  flung  Theobald's  ring  right 
against  his  stately  German  chest.  There'd  be  no 
good  in  telling  you,  Matilda  Anne,  what  led  up  to 
that  most  unlady-like  action.  I  don't  intend  to  burn 
incense  in  front  of  myself.  It  may  have  looked 
wrong.  But  I  know  you'll  take  my  word  when  I  say 
11 


he  deserved  it.  The  one  thing  that  hurts  is  that  he 
had  the  triumph  of  being  the  first  to  sever  diplo 
matic  relations.  In  the  language  of  Shorty  Mc- 
Cabe  and  my  fellow  countrymen,  he  threw  me  down! 
Twenty  minutes  later,  after  composing  my  soul 
and  powdering  my  nose,  I  was  telephoning  all  over 
the  city  trying  to  find  Duncan.  I  got  him  at  last, 
and  he  came  to  the  Ritz  on  the  run.  Then  we  picked 
up  a  residuary  old  horse-hansom  on  Fifth  Avenue 
and  went  rattling  off  through  Central  Park.  There 
I — who  once  boasted  of  seven  proposals  and  three 
times  that  number  of  nibbles — promptly  and 
shamelessly  proposed  to  my  Dinky-Dunk,  though 
Ae  is  too  much  of  a  gentleman  not  to  swear  it's  a 
horrid  lie  and  that  he'd  have  fought  through  an 
acre  of  Greek  fire  to  get  me ! 

But  whatever  happened,  Count  Theobald  Gustav 
Von  Guntner  threw  me  down,  and  Dinky-Dunk 
caught  me  on  the  bounce,  and  now  instead  of  going 
to  embassy  balls  and  talking  world-politics  like  a 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  heroine  I've  married  a  shack- 
12 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

owner  who  grows  wheat  up  in  the  Canadian  North 
west.  And  instead  of  wearing  a  tiara  in  the  Grand 
Tier  at  the  Metropolitan  I'm  up  here  a  dot  on  the 
prairie  and  wearing  an  apron  made  of  butcher's 
linen !  Sursum  cor  da!  For  I'm  still  in  the  ring. 
And  it's  no  easy  thing  to  fall  in  love  and  land  on 
your  feet.  But  I've  gone  and  done  it.  I've  taken 
the  high  jump.  I've  made  my  bed,  as  Uncle  Carlton 
had  the  nerve  to  tell  me,  and  now  I've  got  to  lie  in 
it.  But  assez  d'Etrangers! 

That  wedding-day  of  mine  I'll  always  remember 
as  a  day  of  smells,  the  smell  of  the  pew-cushions  in 
the  empty  church,  the  smell  of  the  lilies-of-the- 
valley,  that  dear,  sweet,  scatter-brained  Fanny- 
Rain-In-The-Face  (she  rushed  to  town  an  hour 
after  getting  my  wire)  insisted  on  carrying,  the 
smell  of  the  leather  in  the  damp  taxi,  the  tobaccoy 
smell  of  Dinky-Dunk's  quite  impossible  best  man, 
who'd  been  picked  up  at  the  hotel,  on  the  fly,  to 
act  as  a  witness,  and  the  smell  of  Dinky-Dunk's 
brand  new  gloves  as  he  lifted  my  chin  and  kissed 
13 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

me  in  that  slow,  tender,  tragic,  end-of-the-worid 
way  big  and  bashful  men  sometimes  have  with 
women.  It's  all  a  jumble  of  smells. 

Then  Dinky-Dunk  got  the  wire  saying  he  might 
lose  his  chance  on  the  Stuart  Ranch,  if  he  didn't 
close  before  the  Calgary  interests  got  hold  of  it. 
And  Dinky-Dunk  wanted  that  ranch.  So  we  talked 
it  over  and  in  five  minutes  had  given  up  the  idea 
of  going  down  to  Aiken  and  were  telephoning  for 
the  stateroom  on  the  Montreal  Express.  I  had  just 
four  hours  for  shopping,  scurrying  about  after 
cook-books  and  golf-boots  and  table-linen  and  a 
chafing  dish,  and  a  lot  of  other  absurd  things  I 
thought  we'd  need  on  the  ranch.  And  then  off  we 
flew  for  the  West,  before  poor,  extravagant,  ecstatic 
Dinky-Dunk's  thirty-six  wedding  orchids  from 
Thorley's  had  faded  and  before  I'd  a  chance  to 
show  Fanny  my  nighties ! 

Am  I  crazy?     Is  it  all  wrong?     Do  I  love  my 

Dinky-Dunk?    Do  I?    The  Good  Lord  only  knows, 

Matilda  Anne!     O  God,  O  God,  if  it  should  turn 

out  that  I  don't,  that  I  can't?     But  I'm  going  to! 

14 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  know  I'm  going  to!  And  there's  one  other 
thing  that  I  know,  and  when  I  remember  it, 
it  sends  a  comfy  warm  wave  through  all  my  body: 
Dinky-Dunk  loves  me.  He's  as  mad  as  a  hatter 
about  me.  He  deserves  to  be  loved  back.  And  I'm 
going  to  love  him  back.  That  is  a  vow  I  here 
with  duly  register.  I'm  going  to  love  my  Dinky- 
Dunk.  But,  oh,  isn't  it  wonderful  to  wake  love  in 
a  man,  in  a  strong  man  ?  To  be  able  to  sweep  him 
off,  that  way,  or  a  tidal  wave  that  leaves  him 
rather  white  and  shaky  in  the  voice  and  trembly 
in  the  fingers,  and  seems  to  light  a  little  luminous 
fire  at  the  back  of  his  eyeballs  so  that  you  can  see 
the  pupils  glow,  the  same  as  an  animal's  when  your 
motor  head-lights  hit  them !  It's  like  taking  a  little 
match  and  starting  a  prairie-fire  and  watching  the 
flames  creep  and  spread  until  the  heavens  are  roar 
ing!  I  wonder  if  I'm  selfish?  I  wonder?  But  I 
can't  answer  that  now,  for  it's  supper  time,  and 
your  Tabby  has  the  grub  to  rustle ! 


15 


Saturday  the  Twenty-first 

I'M  alone  in  the  shack  to-night,  and  I'm  deter 
mined  not  to  think  about  my  troubles.  So  I'm 
going  to  write  you  a  ream,  Matilda  Anne,  whether 
you  like  it  or  not.  And  I  must  begin  by  telling  you 
about  the  shack  itself,  and  how  I  got  here.  All  the 
way  out  from  Montreal  Dinky-Dunk,  in  his  kindly 
way,  kept  doing  his  best  to  key  me  down  and  make 
me  not  expect  too  much.  But  I'd  hold  his  hand, 
under  the  magazine  I  was  pretending  to  read,  and 
whistle  Home,  Sweet  Home!  He  kept  saying  it 
would  be  hard,  for  the  first  year  or  two,  and  there 
would  be  a  terrible  number  of  things  I'd  be  sure 
to  miss.  Love  Me  and  The  World  Is  Mine!  I 
hummed,  as  I  leaned  over  against  his  big  wide 
shoulder.  And  I  lay  there  smiling  and  happy, 
blind  to  everything  that  was  before  me,  and  I  only 
laughed  when  Dinky-Dunk  asked  me  if  I'd  still 
16 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

say  that  when  I  found  there  wasn't  a  nutmeg-grater 
within  seven  miles  of  my  kitchen. 

"Do  you  love  me?"  I  demanded,  hanging  on  to 
him  right  in  front  of  the  car-porter. 

"I  love  you  better  than  anything  else  in  all  this 
wide  world !"  was  his  slow  and  solemn  answer. 

When  we  left  Winnipeg,  too,  he  tried  to  tell  me 
what  a  plain  little  shack  we'd  have  to  put  up  with 
for  a  year  or  two,  and  how  it  wouldn't  be  much 
better  than  camping  out,  and  how  he  knew  I  was 
clear  grit  and  would  help  him  win  that  first  year'i 
battle.  There  was  nothing  depressing  to  me  in  the 
thought  of  life  in  a  prairie-shack.  I  never  knew,  of 
course,  just  what  it  would  be  like,  and  had  no  way 
of  knowing.  I  remembered  Chinkie's  little  love  of  a 
farm  in  Sussex,  and  I'd  been  a  week  at  the  West- 
bury's  place  out  on  Long  Island,  with  its  terraced 
lawns  and  gardens  and  greenhouses  and  macadam 
ized  roads.  And,  on  the  whole,  I  expected  a  cross 
between  a  shooting-box  and  a  Swiss  chalet,  a  little 
nest  of  a  home  that  was  so  small  it  was  sure  to  be 
lovable,  with  a  rambler-rose  draping  the  front  and 
17 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

a  crystal  spring  bubbling  at  the  back  door,  a  little 
flowery  island  on  the  prairie  where  we  could  play 
Swiss-Family-Robinson  and  sally  forth  to  shoot 
prairie-chicken  and  ruffed  grouse  to  our  hearts' 
content. 

Well,  that  shack  wasn't  quite  what  I  expected! 
But  I  mustn't  run  ahead  of  my  story,  Matilda 
Anne,  so  I'll  go  back  to  where  Dinky-Dunk  and  I 
got  off  the  side-line  "accommodation"  at  Buckhorn, 
with  our  traps  and  trunks  and  hand-bags  and  suit 
cases.  And  these  had  scarcely  been  piled  on  the 
wooden  platform  before  the  station-agent  came 
running  up  to  Duncan  with  a  yellow  sheet  in  his 
hand.  And  Duncan  looked  worried  as  he  read  it, 
and  stopped  talking  to  his  man  called  Olie,  who  was 
there  beside  the  platform,  in  a  big,  sweat-stained 
Stetson  hat,  with  a  big  team  hitched  to  a  big  wagon 
with  straw  in  the  bottom  of  the  box. 

Olie,  I  at  once  told  myself,  was  a  Swede.     He 

was  one  of  the  ugliest  men  I  ever  clapped  eyes  on, 

but  I  found  out  afterward  that  his  face  had  been 

frozen  in  a  blizzard,  years  before,  and  his  nose 

18 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

had  split.  This  had  disfigured  him — and  the  job 
had  been  done  for  life.  His  eyes  were  big  and 
pale  blue,  and  his  hair  and  eyebrows  were  a  pale 
yellow.  He  was  the  most  silent  man  I  ever  saw. 
But  Dinky-Dunk  had  already  told  me  he  was  a 
great  worker,  and  a  fine  fellow  at  heart.  And  when 
Dinky-Dunk  says  he'd  trust  a  man,  through  thick 
and  thin,  there  must  be  something  good  in  that 
man,  no  matter  how  bulbous  his  nose  is  or  how 
scared-looking  he  gets  when  a  woman  speaks  to 
him.  Olie  looked  more  scared  than  ever  when  Dinky- 
Dunk  suddenly  ran  to  where  the  train-conductor 
was  standing  beside  his  car-steps,  asked  him  to  hold 
that  "accommodation"  for  half  a  minute,  pulled  his 
suit-case  from  under  my  pile  of  traps,  and  grabbed 
little  me  in  his  arms. 

"Quick,"  he  said,  "good-by!  I've  got  to  go  on 
to  Calgary.  There's  trouble  about  my  registra 
tions  !" 

I  hung  on  to  him  for  dear  life.  "You're  not 
going  to  leave  me  here,  Dinky-Dunk,  in  the  middle 
of  this  wilderness  ?"  I  cried  out,  while  the  conductor 
19 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

and  brakeman  and  station-agent  all  called  and  hol 
loed  and  clamored  for  Duncan  to  hurry. 

"Olie  will  take  you  home,  beloved,"  Dinky-Dunk 
tried  to  assure  me.  "You'll  be  there  by  midnight, 
and  I'll  be  back  by  Saturday  evening !" 

I  began  to  bawl.  "Don't  go !  Don't  leave  me !" 
I  begged  him.  But  the  conductor  simply  tore  him 
out  of  my  arms  and  pushed  him  aboard  the  tail-end 
of  the  last  car.  I  made  a  face  at  a  fat  man  who 
was  looking  out  a  window  at  me.  I  stood  there,  as 
the  train  started  to  move,  feeling  that  it  was  drag 
ging  my  heart  with  it. 

Then  Dinky-Dunk  called  out  to  Olie,  from  the 
back  platform :  "Did  you  get  my  message  and  paint 
that  shack  ?"  And  Olie,  with  my  steamer-rug  in  his 
hand,  only  looked  blank  and  called  back  "No."  But 
I  don't  believe  Dinky-Dunk  even  heard  him,  for  he 
was  busy  throwing  kisses  at  me.  I  stood  there,  at 
ihe  edge  of  the  platform,  watching  that  lonely  last 
car-end  fade  down  into  the  lonely  sky-line.  Then  I 
mopped  my  eyes,  took  one  long  quavery  breath,  and 
said  out  loud,  as  Birdalone  Pebbley  said  Shiner  did 
20 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

when  he  was  lying  wounded  on  the  field  of  Magers- 
fontein:  "Squealer,  squealer,  who's  a  squealer?" 

I  found  the  big  wagon-box  filled  with  our  things 
and  Olie  sitting  there  waiting,  viewing  me  with 
wordless  yet  respectful  awe.  Olie,  in  fact,  has  never 
yet  got  used  to  me.  He's  a  fine  chap,  in  his  rough 
and  inarticulate  way,  and  there's  nothing  he 
wouldn't  do  for  me.  But  I'm  a  novelty  to  him. 
His  pale  blue  eyes  look  frightened  and  he  blushes 
when  I  speak  to  him.  And  he  studies  me  secretly, 
as  though  I  were  a  dromedary,  or  an  archangel,  or 
a  mechanical  toy  whose  inner  mechanism  perplexed 
him.  But  yesterday  I  found  out  through  Dinky- 
Dunk  what  the  probable  secret  of  Olie's  mystifica 
tion  was.  It  was  my  hat.  "It  ban  so  dam'  foolish !" 
he  fervently  confessed. 

That  wagon-ride  from  Buckhorn  out  to  the  ranch 
seemed  endless.  I  thought  we  were  trekking  clear 
up  to  the  North  Pole.  At  first  there  was  what 
you  might  call  a  road,  straight  and  worn  deep,  be 
tween  parallel  lines  of  barb-wire  fencing.  But  this 
road  soon  melted  into  nothing  more  than  a  trail, 
21 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

a  never-ending  gently  curving  trail  that  ribboned 
out  across  the  prairie-floor  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
see.  It  was  a  glorious  afternoon,  one  of  those  opa 
line,  blue-arched  autumn  days  when  it  should  have 
been  a  joy  merely  to  be  alive.  But  I  was  in  an  an 
tagonistic  mood,  and  the  little  cabin-like  farm 
houses  that  every  now  and  then  stood  up  against 
the  sky-line  made  me  feel  lonesome,  and  the  jolting 
of  the  heavy  wagon  made  me  tired,  and  by  six 
o'clock  I  was  so  hungry  that  my  ribs  ached.  We 
had  been  on  the  trail  then  almost  five  hours,  and 
Olie  calmly  informed  me  it  was  only  a  few  hours 
more.  It  got  quite  cool  as  the  sun  went  down,  and 
I  had  to  undo  my  steamer-rug  and  get  wrapped 
up  in  it.  And  still  we  went  on.  It  seemed  like 
being  at  sea,  with  a  light  now  and  then,  miles  and 
miles  away.  Something  howled  dismally  in  the  dis 
tance,  and  gave  me  the  creeps.  Olie  told  me  it  was 
only  a  coyote.  But  we  kept  on,  and  my  ribs  ached 
worse  than  ever. 

Then  I  gave  a  shout  that  nearly  frightened  Olie 
off  the  seat,  for  I  remembered  the  box  of  chocolates 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

we'd  had  on  the  train.  We  stopped  and  found  my 
hand-bag,  and  lighted  matches  and  looked  through 
it.  Then  I  gave  a  second  and  more  dismal  shout,  for 
I  remembered  Dinky-Dunk  had  crammed  it  into  his 
suit-case  at  the  last  moment.  Then  we  went  on 
again,  with  me  a  squaw-woman  all  wrapped  in  her 
blanket.  I  must  have  fallen  asleep,  for  I  woke  with 
a  start.  Olie  had  stopped  at  a  slough  to  water  his 
team,  and  said  we'd  make  home  in  another  hour  or 
two.  How  he  found  his  way  across  that  prairie 
Heaven  only  knows.  I  no  longer  worried.  I  was 
too  tired  to  think.  The  open  air  and  the  swaying 
and  jolting  had  chloroformed  me  into  insensibility. 
Olie  could  have  driven  over  the  edge  of  a  canyon 
and  I  should  never  have  stopped  him. 

Instead  of  falling  into  a  canyon,  however,  at  ex 
actly  ten  minutes  to  twelve  we  pulled  up  beside  the 
shack  door,  which  had  been  left  unlocked,  and  Olie 
went  in  and  lighted  a  lamp  and  touched  a  match  to 
the  fire  already  laid  in  the  stove.  I  don't  remember 
getting  down  from  the  wagon  seat  and  I  don't  re 
member  going  into  the  shack.  But  when  Olie  came 
23 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

from  putting  in  his  team  I  was  fast  asleep  on  a 
luxurious  divan  made  of  a  rather  smelly  steer-hide 
stretched  across  two  slim  cedar-trees  on  four  little 
cedar  legs,  with  a  bag  full  of  pine  needles  at  the 
head.  I  lay  ther$  watching  Olie,  in  a  sort  of  torpor. 
It  surprised  me  how  quickly  his  big  ungainly  body 
could  move,  and  how  adept  those  big  sunburned 
hands  of  his  could  be. 

Then  sharp  as  an  arrow  through  a  velvet  curtain 
came  the  smell  of  bacon  through  my  drowsiness. 
And  it  was  a  heavenly  odor.  I  didn't  even  wash.  I 
ate  bacon  and  eggs  and  toasted  biscuits  and  orange 
marmalade  and  coffee,  the  latter  with  condensed 
milk,  which  "I  hate.  I  don't  know  how  I  got  to  my 
bed,  or  got  my  clothes  off,  or  where  the  worthy 
Olie  slept,  or  who  put  out  the  light,  or  if  the  door 
had  been  left  open  or  shut.  I  never  knew  that  the 
bed  was  hard,  or  that  the  coyotes  were  howling.  I 
only  know  that  I  slept  for  ten  solid  hours,  without 
turning  over,  and  that  when  I  opened  my  eyes  I 
saw  a  big  square  of  golden  sunlight  dancing  on  the 
unpainted  pine  boards  of  the  shack  wall.  And  the 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

funny  part  of  it  all  was,  Matilda  Anne,  I  didn't 
have  the  splitting  headache  I'd  so  dolorously  proph 
esied  for  myself.  Instead  of  that  I  felt  buoyant. 
I  started  to  sing  as  I  pulled  on  my  stockings.  And 
I  suddenly  remembered  that  I  was  terribly  hungry 
again. 

I  swung  open  the  window  beside  me,  for  it  was  on 
hinges,  and  poked  my  head  out.  I  could  see  a 
corral,  and  a  long  low  building  which  I  took  to 
be  the  ranch  stables,  and  another  and  newer-looking 
building  with  a  metal  roof,  and  several  stacks  of 
hay  surrounded  by  a  fence,  and  a  row  of  portable 
granaries.  And  beyond  these  stretched  the  open 
prairie,  limitless  and  beautiful  in  the  clear  morn 
ing  sunshine.  Above  it  arched  a  sky  of  robin-egg 
blue,  melting  into  opal  and  pale  gold  down  toward 
the  rim  of  the  world.  I  breathed  in  lungfuls  of 
clear,  dry,  ozonic  air,  and  I  really  believe  it  made 
me  a  little  light-headed,  it  was  so  exhilarating,  so 
champagnized  with  the  invisible  bubbles  of  life. 

I  needed  that  etheric  eye-opener,  Matilda  Anne, 
before  I  calmly  and  critically  looked  about  our 
25 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

shack.  Oh,  that  shack,  that  shack !  What  a.  come 
down  it  was  for  your  heart-sore  Chaddje !  In  the 
first  place,  it  seemed  no  bigger  than  a  ship's  cabin, 
and  not  one-half  so  orderly.  It  is  made  of  lumber, 
and  not  of  logs,  and  is  about  twelve  feet  wide  and 
eighteen  feet  long.  It  has  three  windows,  on  hinges, 
and  only  one  door.  The  floor  is  rather  rough,  and 
has  a  trap  door  leading  into  a  small  cellar,  where 
vegetables  can  be  stored  for  winter  use.  The  end  of 
the  shack  is  shut  off  by  a  "tarp" — which  I  have 
just  found  out  is  short  for  tarpaulin.  In  other 
words,  the  privacy  of  my  bedroom  is  assured  by 
nothing  more  substantial  than  a  canvas  drop-cur 
tain,  shutting  off  my  boudoir,  where  I  could  never 
very  successfully  bonder,  from  the  larger  living- 
room. 

This  living-room  is  also  the  kitchen,  the  laundry, 
the  sewing-room,  the  reception-room  and  the  li 
brary.  It  has  a  good  big  cookstove,  which  burns 
either  wood  or  coal,  a  built-in  cupboard  with  an 
array  of  unspeakably  ugly  crockery  dishes,  a  row 
26 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

of  shelves  for  holding  canned  goods,  books  and 
magazines,  cooking  utensils,  gun-cartridges,  to 
bacco-jars,  carpenter's  tools  and  a  coal-oil  lamp. 
There  is  also  a  plain  pine  table,  a  few  chairs,  one 
rocking-chair  which  has  plainly  been  made  by  hand, 
and  a  flour-barrel.  Outside  the  door  is  a  wide  wooden 
bench  on  which  stands  a  big  tin  wash-basin  and  a 
cake  of  soap  in  a  sardine  can  that  has  been  punched 
full  of  holes  along  the  bottom.  Above  it  hung  a 
roller  towel  which  looked  a  little  the  worse  for  wear. 
And  that  was  to  be  my  home,  my  one  and  only 
habitation,  for  years  and  years  to  come !  That  lit 
tle  cat-eyed  cubby-hole  of  a  place! 

I  sat  down  on  an  over-turned  wash-tub  about 
twenty  paces  from  the  shack,  and  studied  it  with 
calm  and  thoughtful  eyes.  It  looked  infinitely 
worse  from  the  outside.  The  reason  for  this  was 
that  the  board  siding  had  first  been  covered  with 
tar-paper,  for  the  sake  of  warmth,  and  over  this 
had  been  nailed  pieces  of  tin,  tin  of  every  color  and 
size  and  description.  Some  of  it  was  flattened  out 
27 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

stove-pipe,  and  some  was  obviously  the  sides  of 
tomato-cans.  Even  tin  tobacco-boxes  and  Dundee 
marmalade  holders  and  the  bottoms  of  old  bake- 
pans  and  the  sides  of  an  old  wash-boiler  had  been 
pieced  together  and  patiently  tacked  over  those 
shack-sides.  It  must  have  taken  weeks  and  weeks 
to  do.  And  it  suddenly  impressed  me  as  something 
poignant,  as  something  with  the  Vergilian  touch 
of  tears  in  it.  It  seemed  so  full  of  history,  so  vocal 
of  the  tragic  expedients  to  which  men  on  the  prairie 
must  turn.  It  seemed  pathetic.  It  brought  a  lump 
into  my  throat.  Yet  that  Joseph's  Coat  of  meta\ 
was  a  neatly  done  bit  of  work.  All  it  needed  was 
a  coat  of  paint  or  two,  and  it  would  look  less  like 
a  crazy-quilt  solidified  into  a  homestead.  And  I 
suddenly  remembered  Dinky-Dunk's  question  called 
out  to  Olie  from  the  car-end — and  I  knew  he'd  hur 
ried  off  a  message  to  have  that  telltale  tinning- job 
painted  over  before  I  happened  to  clap  eyes  on  it. 

As  Olie  had  disappeared  from  the  scene  and  waft 
nowhere  to  be  found,  I  went  in  and  got  my  own 
28 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

breakfast.  It  was  supper  over  again,  only  I  scram 
bled  my  eggs  instead  of  frying  them.  And  all 
the  while  I  was  eating  that  meal  I  studied  those 
shack-walls  and  made  mental  note  of  what  should  be 
changed  and  what  should  be  done.  There  was  so 
much,  that  it  rather  overwhelmed  me.  I  sat  at 
the  table,  littered  with  its  dirty  dishes,  wondering 
where  to  begin.  And  then  the  endless  vista  of  it 
all  suddenly  opened  up  before  me.  I  became  nerv 
ously  conscious  of  the  unbroken  silence  about  me, 
and  I  realized  how  different  this  new  life  must  be 
from  the  old.  It  seemed  like  death  itself,  and  it 
got  a  strangle  hold  on  my  nerves,  and  I  knew  I 
was  going  to  make  a  fool  of  myself  the  very  first 
morning  in  my  new  home,  in  my  home  and  Dinky- 
Dunk's.  But  I  refused  to  give  in.  I  did  some 
thing  which  startled  me  a  little,  something  which  I 
had  not  done  for  years.  I  got  down  on  my  knees 
beside  that  plain  wooden  chair  and  prayed  to  God. 
I  asked  Him  to  give  me  strength  to  keep  me  from 
being  a  piker  and  make  me  a  wife  worthy  of  the 
29 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

man  who  loved  me,  and  lead  me  into  the  way  of 
bringing  happiness  to  the  home  that  was  to  be 
ours.  Then  I  rolled  up  my  sleeves,  tied  a  face 
towel  over  my  head  and  went  to  work. 

It  was  a  royal  cleaning-out,  I  can  tell  you.  In 
the  afternoon  I  had  Olie  down  on  all  fours  scrub 
bing  the  floor.  When  he  had  washed  the  windows 
I  had  him  get  a  garden  rake  and  clear  away  the 
rubbish  that  littered  the  dooryard.  I  draped  chintz 
curtains  over  the  windows,  and  had  Olie  nail  two 
shelves  in  a  packing-box  and  then  carry  it  into  my 
boudoir  behind  the  drop-curtain.  Over  this  box 
I  tacked  fresh  chintz  (for  the  shack  did  not  possess 
so  feminine  a  thing  as  a  dresser)  and  on  it  put  my 
folding-mirror  and  my  Tiffany  traveling-clock  and 
all  my  foolish  shimmery  silver  toilet  articles.  Then 
I  tacked  up  photographs  and  magazine-prints 
about  the  bare  wooden  walls — and  decided  that  be 
fore  the  winter  came  those  walls  would  be  painted 
and  papered,  or  I'd  know  the  reason  why.  Then  I 
aired  the  bedding  and  mattress,  and  unpacked  my 
30 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

brand-new  linen  sheets  and  the  ridiculous  hem 
stitched  pillow-slips  that  I'd  scurried  so  frenziedly 
about  the  city  to  get,  and  stowed  my  things  away 
on  the  box-shelves,  and  had  Olie  pound  the  life  out 
of  the  well-sunned  pillows,  and  carefully  remade  the 
bed. 

And  then  I  went  at  the  living-room.  And  it  was 
no  easy  task,  reorganizing  those  awful  shelves  and 
making  sure  I  wasn't  throwing  away  things  Dinky- 
Dunk  might  want  later  on.  But  the  carnage  was 
great,  and  all  afternoon  the  smoke  went  heaven 
ward  from  my  fires  of  destruction.  And  when  it 
was  over  I  told  Olie  to  go  out  for  a  good  long  walk, 
for  I  intended  to  take  a  bath.  Which  I  did  in  the 
wash-tub,  with  much  joy  and  my  last  cake  of  Rog- 
er-and-Gallet  soap.  And  I  had  to  shout  to  poor 
ambulating  Olie  for  half-an-hour  before  I  could 
persuade  him  to  come  in  to  supper.  And  even  then 
he  came  tardily,  with  countless  hesitations  and 
pauses,  as  though  a  lady  temerarious  enough  to 
take  a  scrub  were  for  all  time  taboo  to  the  race  of 
SI 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

man.  And  when  he  finally  ventured  in  through  the 
door,  round-eyed  and  blushing  a  deep  russet,  he 
gaped  at  my  white  middy  and  my  little  white  apron 
with  that  silent  but  eloquent  admiration  which 
couldn't  fail  to  warm  the  cockles  of  the  most  un 
impressionable  housewife's  heart. 


. 


Monday  the  Twenty-third 

MY  Dinky-Dunk  is  back — and  oh,  the  differ 
ence  to  me!  I  kept  telling  myself  that  I  was 
too  busy  to  miss  him.  He  came  Saturday  night 
as  I  was  getting  ready  for  bed.  I'd  been  watch 
ing  the  trail  every  now  and  then,  all  day  long, 
and  by  nine  o'clock  had  given  him  up.  When  I 
heard  him  shouting  for  Olie,  I  made  a  rush  for 
him,  with  only  half  my  clothes  on,  and  nearly 
shocked  Olie  and  some  unknown  man,  who'd  driven 
Dinky-Dunk  home,  to  death.  How  I  hugged  my 
husband !  My  husband — I  love  to  write  that  word. 
And  when  I  got  him  inside  we  had  it  all  over  again. 
He  was  just  like  a  big  overgrown  boy.  And  he  put 
the  table  between  us,  so  he'd  have  a  chance  to  talk. 
But  even  that  didn't  work.  He  smothered  my 
laughing  in  kisses,  and  held  me  up  close  to  him  and 
said  I  was  wonderful.  Then  we'd  try  to  get  down 
to  earth  again,  and  talk  sensibly,  and  then  there'd 
33 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

i 

be  another  death-clinch.  Dinky-Dunk  says  I'm 
worse  than  he  is.  "Of  course  it's  all  up  with  a 
man,"  he  confessed,  "when  he  sees  you  coming  for 
him  with  that  Australian  crawl-stroke  of  yours !" 
For  which  I  did  my  best  to  break  in  his  floating 
ribs.  Heaven  only  knows  how  late  we  talked  that 
night.  And  Dinky-Dunk  had  a  bundle  of  sur 
prises  for  me.  The  first  was  a  bronze  reading- 
lamp.  The  second  was  a  soft  little  rug  for  the 
bedroom — only  an  Axminster,  but  very  acceptable. 
The  third  was  a  pair  of  Juliets,  lined  with  fur,  and 
oceans  too  big  for  me.  And  Dinky-Dunk  says  by 
Tuesday  we'll  have  two  milk-cows,  part-Jersey,  at 
the  ranch,  and  inside  of  a  week  a  crate  of  hens  will 
be  ours.  Thereupon  I  couldn't  help  leading  Dun 
can  to  the  inventory  I  had  made  of  what  we  had, 
and  the  list,  on  the  opposite  side,  of  what  we  had 
to  have.  The  second  thing  under  the  heading  of 
"Needs"  was  "lamp,"  the  fifth  was  "bedroom 
rug,"  the  thirteenth  was  "hens,"  and  the  next  was 
"cow."  I  think  he  was  rather  amazed  at  the  length 
of  that  list  of  "needs,"  but  he  says  I  shall  have 
34 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

everything  in  reason.  And  when  he  kind  of  settled 
down,  and  noticed  the  changes  in  the  living-room 
and  then  went  in  and  inspected  the  bedroom  he  grew 
very  solemn,  of  a  sudden.  It  worried  me. 

"Lady  Bird,"  he  said,  taking  me  in  his  arms, 
"this  is  a  pretty  hard  life  I've  trapped  you  into.  It 
will  have  to  be  hard  for  a  year  or  two,  but  we'll  win 
out,  in  the  end,  and  I  guess  it'll  be  worth  the  fight !" 

Dinky-Dunk  is  such  a  dear.  I  told  him  of  course 
we'd  win  out,  but  I  wouldn't  be  much  use  to  him  at 
first.  I'd  have  to  get  broken  in  and  made  bridle- 
wise. 

"But,  oh,  Dinky-Dunk,  whatever  happens,  you 
must  always  love  me !" — and  I  imagine  I  swam  for 
him  with  my  Australian  crawl-stroke  again.  All  I 
remember  is  that  we  went  to  sleep  in  each  other's 
arms.  And  as  I  started  to  say  and  forgot  to  finish, 
I'd  been  missing  my  Dinky-Dunk  more  than  I 
imagined,  those  last  few  days.  After  that  night  it 
was  no  longer  just  a  shack.  It  was  "Home."  Home 
— it's  such  a  beautiful  word!  It  must  mean  so 
much  to  every  woman.  And  I  fell  asleep  telling 
35 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

myself  it  was  the  loveliest  word  in  the  English 
language. 

In  the  morning  I  slipped  out  of  bed  before 
Dinky-Dunk  was  awake,  for  breakfast  was  to  be 
our  first  home  meal,  and  I  wanted  it  to  be  a  re 
spectable  one.  Der  MenscTi  1st  "was  er  isst — so  I 
must  feed  my  lord  and  master  on  the  best  in  the 
land.  Accordingly  I  put  an  extra  tablespoonful 
of  cream  in  the  scrambled  eggs,  and  two  whole  eggs 
in  the  coffee,  to  make  dead  sure  it  was  crystal-clear. 
Then,  feeling  like  Van  Roon  when  Berlin  declared 
war  on  France,  I  rooted  out  Dinky-Dunk,  made  him 
wash,  and  sat  him  down  in  his  pajamas  and  his 
ragged  old  dressing-gown. 

"I  suppose,"  I  said  as  I  saw  his  eyes  wander 
>bout  the  table,  "that  you  feel  exactly  like  an 
oyster-man  who's  just  chipped  his  Blue-Point  and 
got  his  knife-edge  in  under  the  shell!  And  the 
next  wrench  is  going  to  tell  you  exactly  what  sort 
of  an  oyster  you've  got !" 

Dinky-Dunk  grinned  up  at  me  as  I  buttered  his 
toast,  piping  hot  from  the  range.  "Well,  Lady 
36 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Bird,  you're  not  the  kind  that'll  need  paprika,  any 
way  !"  he  announced  as  he  fell  to.  And  he  ate  like 
a  boa-constrictor  and  patted  his  pa  jama- front  and 
stentoriously  announced  that  he'd  picked  a  queen 
— only  he  pronounced  it  kaveen,  after  the  manner 
of  our  poor  old  Swedish  Olie ! 

As  that  was  Sunday  we  spent  the  morning  "pi- 
rooting"  about  the  place.  Dinky-Dunk  took  me  out 
and  showed  me  the  stables  and  the  hay-stacks  and 
the  granaries — which  he'd  just  waterproofed  so 
there'd  be  no  more  spoilt  grain  on  that  farm — antf 
the  "cool-hole"  he  used  to  use  before  the  cellar  was 
built,  and  the  ruins  of  the  sod-hut  where  the  first 
homesteader  that  owned  that  land  had  lived.  Then 
he  showed  me  the  new  bunk-house  for  the  men, 
which  Olie  is  finishing  in  his  spare  time.  It  looks 
much  better  than  our  own  shack,  being  of  planed 
lumber.  But  Dinky-Dunk  is  loyal  to  the  shack, 
and  says  it's  really  better  built,  and  the  warmest 
shack  in  the  West — as  I'll  find  before  winter  is 
over. 

Then  we  stopped  at  the  pump,  and  Dinky-Dunk 
37 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

made  a  confession.  When  he  first  bought  that 
ranch  there  was  no  water  at  the  shack,  except  what 
he  could  catch  from  the  roof.  Water  had  to  be 
hauled  for  miles,  and  it  was  muddy  and  salty,  at 
that.  They  used  to  call  it  "Gopher  soup."  This 
lack  of  water  always  worried  him,  he  said,  for 
women  always  want  water,  and  oodles  of  it.  It  was 
the  year  before,  after  he  had  left  me  at  Banff,  that 
he  was  determined  to  get  water.  It  was  hard  work, 
putting  down  that  well,  and  up  to  almost  the  last 
moment  it  promised  to  be  a  dry  hole.  But  when 
they  struck  that  water,  Dinky-Dunk  says,  he  de 
cided  in  his  soul  that  he  was  going  to  have  me?  if 
I  was  to  be  had.  It  was  water  fit  for  a  queen.  And 
he  wanted  his  queen.  But  of  course  even  queens 
have  to  be  well  laved  and  well  laundered.  He  said  he 
didn't  sleep  all  night,  after  they  found  the  water 
was  there.  He  was  too  happy ;  he  just  went  mean 
dering  about  the  prairie,  singing  to  himself. 

"So  you  were  pretty  sure  of  me,  Kitten-Cats, 
even  then  ?"  I  demanded. 

He  looked  at  me  with  his  solemn  Scotch-Canadian 
38 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

eyes.     "I'm  not  sure  of  you,  even  now,"  was  his 
answer.    But  I  made  him  take  it  back. 

It's  rather  odd  how  Dinky-Dunk  got  this  ranch, 
which  used  to  be  called  the  Cochrane  Ranch,  for 
even  behind  this  peaceful  little  home  of  ours  there 
is  a  touch  of  tragedy.  Hugh  Cochrane  was  one  of 
Dinky-Dunk's  surveyors  when  he  first  took  up  rail' 
road  work  in  British  Columbia.  Hugh  had  a 
younger  brother  Andrew,  who  was  rather  wild  and 
had  been  brought  out  here  and  planted  on  the  prai 
rie  to  keep  him  out  of  mischief.  One  winter  night 
he  rode  nearly  thirty  miles  to  a  dance  (they  do  that 
apparently  out  here,  and  think  nothing  of  it)  and 
instead  of  riding  home  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morn 
ing,  with  the  others,  he  visited  a  whisky-run 
ner  who  was  operating  a  "blind  pig."  There  he 
acquired  much  more  whisky  than  was  good  for 
him  and  got  lost  on  the  trail.  That  meant  he  was 
badly  frozen  and  probably  out  of  his  mind  before 
he  got  back  to  the  shack.  He  wasn't  able  to  keep 
up  a  fire,  of  course,  or  do  anything  for  himself — 
and  I  suppose  the  poor  boy  simply  froze  to  death 
39 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

He  was  alone  there,  and  it  was  weeks  and  weeks  be 
fore  his  body  was  found.  But  the  most  gruesome 
part  of  it  all  is  that  his  horses  had  been  stabled, 
tied  up  in  their  stalls  without  feed.  They  were 
all  found  dead,  poor  brutes.  They'd  even  eaten 
the  wooden  boards  the  mangers  were  built  of.  Hugh 
Cochrane  couldn't  get  over  it,  and  was  going  to  sell 
the  ranch  for  fourteen  hundred  dollars  when  Dinky- 
Dunk  heard  of  it  and  stepped  in  and  bought  the 
whole  half-section.  Then  he  bought  the  McKinnon 
place,  a  half-section  to  the  north  of  this,  after  Mc 
Kinnon  had  lost  all  his  buildings  because  he  was  too 
shiftless  to  make  a  fire-guard.  And  when  the  rail 
way  work  was  finished  Dinky-Dunk  took  up  wheat- 
growing.  He  is  a  great  believer  in  wheat.  He 
says  wheat  spells  wealth,  in  this  country.  Some 
people  call  him  a  "land-miner,"  he  says,  but  when 
he's  given  the  chance  to  do  the  thing  as  he  wants 
to,  he'll  show  them  who's  right. 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-fifth 

DINKY-DUNK  and  I  have  been  making  plans. 
He's  promised  to  build  an  annex  to  the  shack, 
a  wing  on  the  north  side,  so  I  can  have  a 
store-room  and  a  clothes-closet  at  one  end  and 
a  guest-chamber  at  the  other.  And  I'm  to  have 
a  sewing-machine  and  a  bread-mixer,  and  the 
smelly  steer-hide  divan  is  going  to  be  banished  to 
the  bunk-house.  And  Dinky-Dunk  says  I  must 
have  a  pinto,  a  riding-horse,  as  soon  as  he  can  lay 
hands  on*  the  right  animal.  Later  on  he  says  I 
must  have  help,  but  out  here  in  the  West  women 
are  hard  to  get,  and  harder  to  keep.  They  are 
snatched  up  by  lonely  bachelors  like  Dinky-Dunk. 
They  can't  even  keep  the  school-teachers  (mostly 
girls  from  Ontario)  from  marrying  off.  But  I 
don't  want  a  woman  about,  not  for  a  few  months 
yet.  I  want  Dinky-Dunk  all  to  myself.  And  the 
freedom  of  isolation  like  this  is  such  a  luxury  !  To 
be  just  one's  self,  in  civilization,  is  a  luxury,  is  the 
41 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

greatest  luxury  in  the  world, — and  also  the  most 
expensive,  I've  found  to  my  sorrow. 

Out  here,  there's  no  object  in  being  anything  but 
one's  self.  Life  is  so  simple  and  honest,  so  back  to 
first  principles !  There's  joy  in  the  thought  of  get* 
ting  rid  of  all  the  sublimated  junk  of  city  life. 
I'm  just  a  woman ;  and  Dinky-Dunk  is  just  a  man. 
We've  got  a  roof  and  a  bed  and  a  fire.  That's  all. 
And  what  is  there,  really,  after  that?  We  have 
to  eat,  of  course,  but  we  really  live  well.  There's 
all  the  game  we  want,  especially  wild  duck  and 
prairie  chicken,  to  say  nothing  of  jack-rabbit. 
Dinky-Dunk  sallies  out  and  pots  them  a*  we  need 
them.  We  get  our  veal  and  beef  by  the  quarter,  but 
it  will  not  keep  well  until  the  weather  gets  cooler, 
so  I  put  what  we  don't  need  in  brine  and  use  it 
for  boiling-meat.  We  have  no  fresh  fruit,  but  even 
evaporated  peaches  can  be  stewed  so  that  they're 
appetizing.  And  as  I  had  the  good  sense  to  bring 
out  with  me  no  less  than  three  cook-books,  from 
Brentano's,  I  am  able  to  attempt  more  and  more 
llaborate  dishes. 

4? 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Olie  has  a  wire-fenced  square  where  he  grew  beets 
and  carrots  and  onions  and  turnips,  and  the  biggest 
potatoes  I  ever  saw.  These  will  be  pitted  before 
the  heavy  frosts  come.  We  get  our  butter  and  lard 
by  the  pail,  and  our  flour  by  the  sack,  but  getting 
things  in  quantities  sometimes  has  its  drawbacks. 
When  I  examined  the  oatmeal  box  I  found  it  had 
weavels  in  it,  and  promptly  threw  all  that  meal 
away.  Dinky-Dunk,  coming  in  from  the  corral, 
viewed  the  pile  with  round-eyed  amazement.  "It's 
got  worms  in  it !"  I  cried  out  to  him.  He  took  up 
a  handful  of  it,  and  stared  at  it  with  tragic  sor 
row.  "Why,  I  ate  weavels  all  last  winter,"  he  re 
provingly  remarked.  Dinky-Dunk,  with  his 
Scotch  strain,  loves  his  porridge.  So  we'll  have 
to  get  a  hundred-weight,  guaranteed  strictly  un 
inhabited,  when  we  team  into  Buckhorn. 

Men  are  funny !  A  woman  never  quite  knows 
a  man  until  she  has  lived  with  him  and  day  by  day 
unearthed  his  little  idiosyncrasies.  She  may  seem 
close  to  him,  in  those  earlier  days  of  romance,  but 
she  never  really  knows  him,  any  more  than  a  spar- 
43 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

row  on  a  telegraph  wire  knows  the  Morse  Code 
thrilling  along  under  its  toes !  Men  have  so  many 
little  kinks  and  turns,  even  the  best  of  them.  I 
tacked  oil-cloth  on  a  shoe-box  and  draped  chintz 
around  it,  and  fixed  a  place  for  Dinky-Dunk  to 
wash,  in  the  bedroom,  when  he  comes  in  at  noon, 
At  night  I  knew  it  would  be  impossible,  for  he's 
built  a  little  wash-house  with  old  binder-carrier  can 
vas  nailed  to  four  posts,  and  out  there  Olie  and  he 
strip  every  evening  and  splash  each  other  with 
horse-pails  full  of  well-water.  Dinky-Dunk  is  clean, 
whatever  he  may  be,  but  I  thought  it  would  look 
more  civilized  if  he'd  perform  his  limited  noon-day 
ablutions  in  the  bedroom.  He  did  it  for  one  day, 
in  pensive  silence,  and  then  sneaked  the  wash-things 
back  to  the  rickety  old  bench  outside  the  door.  He 
said  it  saved  time. 

Among  other  vital  things,  I've  found  that 
Dinky-Dunk  hates  burnt  toast.  Yesterday  morn 
ing,  Matilda  Anne,  I  got  thinking  about  Corfu  an<{ 
Ragusa  and  you,  and  it  did  burn  a  little  around  the 
edges,  I  suppose.  So  I  kissed  his  ear  and  told  hint 
44 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

carbon  would  make  his  teeth  white.  But  he  got  up 
and  went  out  with  a  sort  of  "In-this-way-madness- 
lies"  expression,  and  I  felt  wretched  all  day.  So 
this  morning  I  was  more  careful.  I  did  that  toast 
just  to  a  turn.  "Feast,  O  Kaikobad,  on  the  blond 
est  of  toast !"  I  said  as  I  salaamed  and  handed  him 
the  plate.  He  wrinkled  up  his  forehead  a  little,  at 
the  sting  in  that  speech,  but  he  could  not  keep  f  roH 
grinning.  Then,  too,  Dinky-Dunk  always  soaps 
the  back  of  his  hand,  to  wash  his  back,  and  reach 
high  up.  So  do  I.  And  on  cold  mornings  he  says 
*(One,  two,  three,  the  bumble  bee!"  before  he  hops 
out  of  bed — and  I  imagined  I  was  the  only  grown 
up  in  all  the  wide  world  who  still  made  use  of  that 
foolish  rhyme.  And  the  other  day  when  he  was  hot 
and  tired  I  found  him  drinking  a  dipperful  of  cold 
water  fresh  from  the  well.  So  I  said : 

"Many  a  man  has  gone  to  his  sarcophagus 

Thro'  pouring  cold  water  down  a  warm  esophagus !" 

When  I  recited  that  rhyme  to  him  he  swung  about 
as  though  he'd  been  shot.     "Where  did  you  ever 
45 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

hear  that?"  he  asked.  I  told  him  that  was  what 
Lady  Agatha  always  said  to  me  when  she  caught  me 
drinking  ice-water.  "I  thought  I  was  the  only  man 
in  the  world  who  knew  that  crazy  old  couplet,"  he 
confessed,  and  he  chased  me  around  the  shack  with 
the  rest  of  the  dipperful,  to  keep  from  chilling  his 
tummy,  he  explained.  Then  Dinky-Dunk  and  I 
both  like  to  give  pet-names  to  things.  He  calls 
me  "Lady  Bird"  and  "Gee-Gee"  and  sometimes 
"Honey,"  and  sometimes  "Boca  Chica"  and  "Tab 
by."  And  I  call  him  Dinky-Dunk  and  The  Dour 
Maun,  and  Kitten-Cats,  though  for  some  reason  or 
other  he  hates  that  last  name.  I  think  he  feels  it's 
an  affront  to  his  dignity.  And  no  man  likes  a 
trace  of  mockery  in  a  woman.  But  Dinky-Dunk's 
names  are  born  of  affection,  and  I  love  him  for 
them. 

Even  the  ranch  horses  have  all  been  tagged  with 
names.  There's  "Slip-Along"  and  "Water  Light" 
and  "Bronk"  and  "Patsy  Crocker"  and  "Pick  and 
Shovel"  and  "Tumble  Weed,"  and  others  that  I 
can't  remember  at  the  moment.  And  I  find  I'm 
46 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

picking  up  certain  of  Dinky-Dunk's  little  habits, 
and  dropping  into  the  trick  of  looking  at  .things 
<rom  his  standpoint.  I  wonder  if  husbands  and 
wives  really  do  get  to  be  alike?  There  are  times 
when  Dinky-Dunk  seems  to  know  just  what  I'm 
thinking,  for  when  he  speaks  he  says  exactly  the 
thing  I  was  going  to  ask  him.  And  he's  inexorable 
in  his  belief  that  one's  right  shoe  should  always 
be  put  on  first.  So  am  I ! 


Thursday  the  Twenty -sixth 

DINKY-DUNK  is  rather  pinched  for  ready  moneyk 
He  is  what  they  call  "land  poor"  out  here. 
He  has  big  plans,  but  not  much  cash.  So  we 
shall  have  to  be  frugal.  I  had  decided  on  vast 
and  sudden  changes  in  this  household,  but  I'll  have 
to  draw  in  my  horns  a  little.  Luckily  I  have 
nearly  two  hundred  dollars  of  my  own  money  left 
— and  have  never  mentioned  it  to  Dinky-Dunk.  So 
almost  every  night  I  study  the  magazine  adver 
tisements,  and  the  catalog  of  the  mail-order 
house  in  Winnipeg.  Each  night  I  add  to  my  list  of 
"Needs,"  and  then  go  back  and  cross  out  some  of 
the  earlier  ones,  as  being  too  extravagant,  for  the 
length  of  my  list  almost  gives  me  heart-failure. 
And  as  I  sit  there  thinking  of  what  I  have  to  do 
without,  I  envy  the  women  I've  known  in  other 
days,  the  women  with  all  their  white  linen  and  their 
cut  glass  and  silverware  and  their  prayer-rugs  and 
48 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

period  rooms  and  their  white-tiled  baths  and  their 
machinery  for  making  life  so  comfortable  and  so 
easy.  I  envy  them.  I  put  away  my  list,  and  go 
to  bed  envying  them.  But,  oh,  I  sleep  so  soundly, 
and  I  wake  up  so  buoyant  in  heart,  so  eager  to  get 
at  the  next  day's  work,  so  glad  to  see  I'm  slowly 
getting  things  more  ship-shape.  It  doesn't  leave 
room  for  regret.  And  there  is  always  the  future, 
the  happier  to-morrow  to  which  our  thoughts  go 
out.  I  get  to  thinking  of  the  city  again,  of  the 
hundreds  of  women  I  know  going  like  hundreds  of 
crazy  squirrels  on  their  crazy  treadmill  of  amuse 
ments,  and  of  the  thousands  and  thousands  of 
women  who  are  toiling  without  hope,  going  on  in  the 
same  old  rut  from  day  to  day,  cooped  up  in  little 
flats  and  back  rooms,  with  bad  air  and  bad  food 
and  bad  circulation,  while  I  have  all  God's  out 
doors  to  wander  about  in,  and  can  feel  the  singing 
rivers  of  health  in  my  veins.  And  here  I  side-step 
my  Song-of-Solomon  voluntary,  for  they  have  one 
thing  I  do  miss,  and  that  is  music.  I  wish  I  had 
a  cottage-piano  or  a  Baby  Grand  or  a  Welte 
49 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Mignon!  I  wish  I  had  any  kind  of  an  old  piano! 
I  wish  I  had  an  accordion,  or  a  German  Sweet- 
Potato,  or  even  a  Jew's-Harp ! 

But  what's  the  use  of  wishing  for  luxuries,  when 
we  haven't  even  a  can-opener — Dinky-Dunk  says 
he's  used  a  hatchet  for  over  a  year !  And  our  only 
toaster  is  a  kitchen-fork  wired  to  the  end  of  a  lath. 
I  even  saw  Dinky-Dunk  spend  half  an  hour 
straightening  out  old  nails  taken  from  one  of  our 
shipping-boxes.  And  the  only  colander  we  have  was 
made  out  of  a  leaky  milk-pan  with  holes  punched 
in  its  bottom.  And  we  haven't  a  double-boiler  or  a 
mixing-bowl  or  a  doughnut-cutter.  When  I  told 
Dinky-Dunk  yesterday  that  we  were  running  out  of 
soap,  he  said  he'd  build  a  leach  of  wood-ashes  and 
get  beef -tallow  and  make  soft  soap.  I  asked  him 
how  long  he'd  want  to  kiss  a  downy  cheek  that  had 
been  washed  in  soft  soap.  He  said  he'd  keep  on 
kissing  me  if  I  was  a  mummy  pickled  in  bitumen. 
But  I  prefer  not  risking  too  much  of  the  pickling 
process. 

Which  reminds  me  of  the  fact  that  I  find  my  hair 
50 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

a  terrible  nuisance,  with  no  Hortense  to  struggle 
with  it  every  morning.  As  you  know,  it's  as  thick 
as  a  rope  and  as  long  as  my  arm.  I  begrudge  the 
time  it  takes  to  look  after  it,  and  such  a  thing  as  a 
good  shampoo  is  an  event  to  be  approached  with 
trepidation  and  prepared  for  with  zeal.  "Coises 
on  me  beauty !"  I  think  I'll  cut  that  wool  off.  But 
on  each  occasion  when  I  have  my  mind  about  made 
up  I  experience  one  of  "Mr.  Polly's"  1'il  dog  mo 
ments.  The  thing  that  makes  me  hesitate  is  the 
thought  that  Dinky-Dunk  might  hate  me  for  the 
rest  of  his  days.  And  now  that  our  department- 
store  aristocracy  seems  to  have  a  corner  in  Counts 
and  I  seem  destined  to  worry  along  with  merely  an 
American  husband,  I  don't  intend  to  throw  away 
the  spoons  with  the  dish-water!  But  having  to 
fuss  so  with  that  hair  is  a  nuisance,  especially  at 
night,  when  I  am  so  tired  that  my  pillow  seems  to 
bark  like  a  dog  for  me  to  come  and  pat  it. 

And  speaking  of  that  reminds  me  that  I  have 
to  order  arch-supports  for  my  feet.     I'm  on  them 
so  much  that  by  bedtime  my  ankles  feel  like  a 
51 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

chocolat  mousse  that's  been  left  out  in  the  sun.  Yet 
this  isn't  a  whimper,  Matilda  Anne,  for  when  I  turn 
in  I  sleep  like  a  child.  No  more  counting  and  going 
to  the  medicine-chest  for  coal-tar  pills.  I  abjure 
them.  I,  who  used  to  have  so  many  tricks  to  bring 
the  starry-eyed  goddess  bending  over  my  pillow, 
hereby  announce  myself  as  the  noblest  sleeper 
north  of  the  Line !  I  no  longer  need  to  count  the 
sheep  as  they  come  over  the  wall,  or  patiently  try 
to  imagine  the  sound  of  surf -waves,  or  laboriously 
re-design  that  perennial  dinner-gown  which  I've 
kept  tucked  away  in  the  cedar-chest  of  the  imagina 
tion  as  long  as  I  can  remember,  elaborating  it  over 
and  over  again  down  to  the  minutest  details 
through  the  longest  hour  of  my  whitest  white  night 
until  it  began  to  merge  into  the  velvety  robes  of 
slumber  itself!  Nowadays  an  ogre  called  Ten- 
O'Clock  steals  up  behind  my  chair  with  a  club  in 
his  hand  and  stuns  me  into  insensibility.  Two  or 
three  times,  in  fact,  my  dear  old  clumsy-fingered 
Dinky-Dunk  has  helped  me  get  my  clothes  off. 
52 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

But  he  says  that  the  nicest  sound  he  knows  is  to 
lie  in  bed  and  hear  the  tinkle  of  my  hair-pins  as 
I  toss  them  into  the  little  Coalport  pin-tray  on  my 
dresser — which  reminds  me  what  Chinkie  once  said 
about  his  idea  of  Heaven  being  eating  my  divinity- 
fudge  to  the  sound  of  trumpets ! 

I  brag  about  being  busy,  but  I'm  not  the  only 
busy  person  about  this  wickyup.  Olie  and  Dinky- 
Dunk  talk  about  summer-fallowing  and  double- 
discing  and  drag-harrowing  and  fire-guarding,  and 
I'm  beginning  to  understand  what  it  all  means. 
They  are  out  with  their  teams  all  day  long,  working 
like  Trojans.  We  have  mid-day  dinner,  which  Olie 
bolts  in  silence  and  with  the  rapidity  of  chain- 
lightning.  He  is  the  most  expert  of  sword-swallow- 
ers,  with  a  table-knife,  and  Dinky-Dunk  says  it 
keeps  reminding  him  how  Burbank  could  make  a 
fortune  inventing  a  square  pea  that  would  stay  on 
a  knife-blade.  But  Dinky-Dunk  stopped  me  call 
ing  him  "The  Sword  Swallower"  and  has  privately 
tipped  Olie  off  as  to  the  functions  of  the  table  fork. 
53 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

How  the  males  of  this  old  earth  stick  together! 
The  world  of  men  is  a  secret  order,  and  every  man 
is  a  member ! 

Having  bolted  his  dinner  Olie  always  makes  for 
outdoors.  Then  Dinky-Dunk  comes  to  my  side  of 
the  table.  We  sit  side  by  side,  with  our  arms 
around  each  other.  Sometimes  I  fill  his  pipe  for 
him  and  light  it.  Then  we  talk  lazily,  happily, 
contentedly  and  sometimes  shockingly.  Then  he 
looks  at  our  nickel-alarm  clock,  up  on  the  book 
shelves  which  I  made  out  of  old  biscuit-boxes,  and 
invariably  says :  "This  isn't  the  spirit  that  built 
Rome,"  and  kisses  me  three  times,  once  on  each  eye 
lid,  tight,  and  once  on  the  mouth.  I  don't  even 
mind  the  taste  of  the  pipe.  Then  he's  off,  and  I'm 
alone  for  the  afternoon. 

But  I'm  getting  things  organized  now  so  that  I 
have  a  little  spare  time.  And  with  time  on  my 
hands  I  find  myself  turning  very  restless.  Yes 
terday  I  wandered  off  on  the  prairie  and  nearly  got 
lost.  Dinky-Dunk  says  I  must  be  more  careful, 
54 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Sntil  I  get  to  know  the  country  better.  He  put  m£ 
up  on  his  shoulder  and  made  me  promise.  Then  he 
let  me  down.  It  made  me  wonder  if  I  hadn't  married 
a  masterful  man.  Above  all  things  I've  always 
wanted  freedom. 

"I'm  a  wild  woman,  Duncan.  You'll  never  tame 
me,"  I  confessed  to  him. 

He  laughed  a  little. 

"So  you  think  you  will?"  I  demanded. 

"No,  /  won't,  Gee-Gee,  but  life  will !" 

And  again  I  felt  some  ghostly  spirit  of  revolt 
stirring  in  me,  away  down  deep.  I  think  he  saw 
some  shadow  of  it,  caught  some  echo  of  it,  for  his 
manner  changed  and  he  pushed  back  the  hair  from 
my  forehead  and  kissed  me,  almost  pityingly. 

"There's  one  thing  must  not  happen!"  I  told 
him  as  he  held  me  in  his  arms. 

He  did  not  let  his  eyes  meet  mine. 

"Why?"  he  asked. 

"I'm  afraid — out  here !"  I  confessed  as  I  clung  tc 
jiim  and  felt  the  need  of  having  him  close  to  me.  H$ 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

was  very  quiet  and  thoughtful  all  evening.  Befort 
I  fell  asleep  he  told  me  that  on  Monday  the  two  of 
us  would  team  in  to  Buckhorn  and  get  a  wagon' 
load  of  supplies. 


Saturday  the  Twenty-eighth 

I  HAVE  got  my  cayuse.  Dinky-Dunk  meant  him 
for  a  surprise,  but  the  shyest  and  reddest- 
headed  cowboy  that  ever  sat  in  a  saddle  came 
cantering  along  the  trail,  and  I  saw  him  first.  He 
was  leading  the  shaggiest,  piebaldest,  pottest-tum- 
mied,  craziest-looking  little  cayuse  that  ever  wore 
a  bridle.  I  gave  one  look  at  his  tawny-colored 
forelock,  which  stood  pompadour-style  about  his 
ears,  and  shouted  out  "Paderewski !"  Dinky-Dunk 
came  and  stood  beside  me  and  laughed.  He  said 
that  cayuse  did  look  like  Paderewski,  but  the  youth 
of  the  fiery  locks  blushingly  explained  that  his  pres 
ent  name  was  "Jail-Bird,"  which  some  fool  Scandi 
navian  had  used  instead  of  "Grey-Bird,"  his  au 
thentic  and  original  appellative.  But  I  stuck  to  my 
name,  though  we  have  shortened  it  into  "Paddy." 
And  Paddy  must  indeed  have  been  a  jail-bird,  or 
deserved  to  be  one,  for  he  is  marked  and  scarred 
57 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

from  end  to  end.  But  he  is  good-tempered,  tough 
as  hickory  and  obligingly  omnivorous.  Every  one 
in  the  West,  men  and  women  alike,  rides  astride,  and 
I  have  been  practising  on  Paddy.  It  seems  a  very 
comfortable  and  sensible  way  to  ride,  but  I  shall 
have  to  toughen  up  a  bit  before  I  hit  the  trail  for 
any  length  of  time. 

I've  been  wondering,  Matilda  Anne,  if  this  all 
sounds  pagan  and  foolish  to  you,  uncultured,  as 
Theobald  Gustav  would  put  it?  I've  also  been  won 
dering,  since  I  wrote  that  last  sentence,  if  people 
really  need  culture,  or  what  we  used  to  call  cul 
ture,  and  if  it  means  as  much  to  life  as  so  many 
imagine.  Here  we  are  out  here  without  any  of  the 
refinements  of  civilization,  and  we're  as  much  nt 
peace  with  our  own  souls  as  are  the  birds  of  the 
air — when  there  are  birds  in  the  air,  which  isn't 
in  our  country !  Culture,  it  seems  to  me  as  I  look 
back  on  things,  tends  to  make  people  more  and 
more  mere  spectators  of  life,  detaching  them  front 
it  and  lifting  them  above  it.  Or  can  it  be  that  the 
mere  spectators  demand  culture,  to  take  the  place  of 
58 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

what  they  miss  by  not  being  actual  builders  and 
workers  ? 

We  are  farmers,  just  rubes  and  hicks,  as  they  say 
in  my  country.  But  we're  tilling  the  soil  and  grow 
ing  wheat.  We're  making  a  great  new  country  out 
of  what  was  once  a  wilderness.  To  me,  that  seems 
almost  enough.  We're  laboring  to  feed  the  world, 
since  the  world  must  have  bread,  and  there's  some 
thing  satisfying  and  uplifting  in  the  mere  thought 
that  we  can  answer  to  God,  in  the  end,  for  our 
lives,  no  matter  how  raw  and  rude  they  may  have 
been.  And  there  are  mornings  when  I  am  Brown 
ing's  "Saul"  in  the  flesh.  The  great  wash  of  air 
from  sky-line  to  sky-line  puts  something  into  my 
blood  or  brain  that  leaves  me  almost  dizzy.  I 
sizzle !  It  makes  me  pulse  and  tingle  and  cry  out 
that  life  is  good — good!  I  suppose  it  is  nothing 
more  than  altitude  and  ozone.  But  in  the  matter 
of  intoxicants  it  stands  on  a  par  with  anything  that 
was  ever  poured  out  of  bottles  at  Martin's  or  Bus- 
tanoby's.  And  at  sunrise,  when  the  prairie  is  thinly 
silvered  with  dew,  when  the  tiny  hammocks  of  the 
59 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

spider-webs  swing  a  million  sparkling  webs  strung 
with  diamonds,  when  every  blade  of  grass  is  a  sing 
ing  string  of  pearls,  hymning  to  God  on  High  for 
the  birth  of  a  golden  day,  I  can  feel  my  heart  swell, 
and  I'm  so  abundantly,  so  inexpressibly  alive,  alive 
to  every  finger-tip!  Such  space,  such  light,  such 
distances !  And  being  Saul  is  so  much  better  than 
reading  about  him ! 


Wednesday  the  First 

I  WAS  too  tired  to  write  any  last  night,  though 
there  seemed  so  much  to  talk  about.  We  teamed 
into  Buckhorn  for  our  supplies,  two  leisurely, 
lovely,  lazy  days  on  the  trail,  which  we  turned  into 
a  sort  of  gipsy-holiday.  We  took  blankets  and  grub 
and  feed  for  the  horses  and  a  frying-pan,  and 
camped  out  on  the  prairie.  The  night  was  pretty 
cool,  but  we  made  a  good  fire,  and  had  hot  coffee. 
Dinky-Dunk  smoked  and  I  sang.  Then  we  rolled 
up  in  our  blankets  and  as  I  lay  there  watching  the 
stars  I  got  thinking  of  the  lights  of  the  Great 
White  Way.  Then  I  nudged  my  husband  and  asked 
him  if  he  knew  what  my  greatest  ambition  in  life 
used  to  be.  And  of  course  he  didn't.  "Well, 
Dinky-Dunk,"  I  told  him,  "it  was  to  be  the  boy 
who  opens  the  door  at  Malliard's!  For  two  whole 
years  I  ate  my  heart  out  with  envy  of  that  boy,  who 
always  lived  in  the  odor  of  such  heavenly  hot  choco- 
61 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

late  and  wore  two  rows  of  shining  buttons  down  his 
braided  coat  and  was  never  without  white  gloves  and 
morning,  noon  and  night  paraded  about  in  the 
duckiest  little  skull-cap  cocked  very  much  to  one 
side  like  a  Grenadier's !"  And  Dinky-Dunk  told 
me  to  go  to  sleep  or  he'd  smother  me  with  a  horse- 
blanket.  So  I  squirmed  back  into  my  blanket  and 
got  "nested"  and  watched  the  fire  die  away  while 
far,  far  off  somewhere  a  coyote  howled.  That  made 
«ne  lonesome,  so  I  got  Dinky-Dunk's  hand,  and  fell 
asleep  holding  it  in  mine. 

I  woke  up  early.  Dinky-Dunk  had  forgotten 
about  my  hand,  and  it  was  cold.  In  the  East  there 
was  a  low  bar  of  ethereally  pale  silver,  which  turned 
to  amber,  and  then  to  ashes  of  roses,  and  then  to 
gold.  I  saw  one  sublime  white  star  go  out,  in  the 
West,  and  then  behind  the  bars  of  gold  the  sky 
grew  rosy  with  morning  until  it  was  one  Burgun- 
dian  riot  of  bewildering  color.  I  sat  up  and  watched 
it.  Then  I  reached  over  and  shook  Dinky-Dunic 
It  was  too  glorious  a  daybreak  to  miss.  He  looked 
at  me  with  one  eye  open,  like  a  sleepy  hound. 
62 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

"You  must  see  it,  Dinky-Dunk !  It's  so  resplend 
ent  it's  positively  vulgar !" 

He  sat  up,  stared  at  the  pageantry  of  color  for 
one  moment,  and  then  wriggled  down  into  his 
blanket  again.  I  tickled  his  nose  with  a  blade  of 
sweet-grass.  Then  I  washed  my  face  in  the  dew, 
the  same  as  we  did  in  Christ-Church  Meadow  that 
glorious  May-Day  in  Oxford.  By  the  time  Dinky- 
Dunk  woke  up  I  had  the  coffee  boiling  and  the 
bacon  sizzling  in  the  pan.  It  was  the  most  celestial 
smell  that  ever  assailed  human  nostrils,  and  I  blush 
with  shame  at  the  thought  of  how  much  I  ate  at 
that  breakfast,  sitting  flat  on  an  empty  oat-sack 
and  leaning  against  a  wagon-wheel.  By  eight 
o;clock  we  were  in  the  metropolis  of  Buckhorn  and 
busy  gathering  up  our  things  there.  And  they  made 
a  very  respectable  wagon-load. 


Thursday  the  Second 

I  HAVE  been  practising  like  mad  learning  to 
play  the  mouth-organ.  I  bought  it  in  Buck- 
horn,  without  letting  Dinky-Dunk  know,  and  all 
day  long,  when  I  knew  it  was  safe,  I've  been  at  it. 
So  to-night,  when  I  had  my  supper-table  all  ready, 
I  got  the  ladder  that  leaned  against  one  of  the  gran 
aries  and  mounted  the  nearest  hay-stack.  There, 
quite  out  of  sight,  I  waited  until  Dinky-Dunk  came 
in  with  his  team.  I  saw  him  go  into  the  shack  and 
then  step  outside  again,  staring  about  in  a  brown 
study.  Then  I  struck  up  Traumerei. 

You  should  have  seen  that  boy's  face !  He  looked 
up  at  the  sky,  as  though  my  poor  little  harmonica 
were  the  aerial  outpourings  of  archangels.  He 
stood  stock-still,  drinking  it  in.  Then  he  bolted 
for  the  stables,  thinking  it  came  from  there.  It 
took  him  some  time  to  corner  me  up  on  my  stack- 
top.  Then  I  slid  down  into  his  arms.  And  I  be- 
64 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

lieve  he  loves  that  mouth-organ  music.  After  sup 
per  he  made  me  go  out  and  sit  on  the  oat-box  and 
play  my  repertory.  He  says  it's  wonderful,  from 
a  distance.  But  that  mouth-organ's  rather  brassy, 
and  it  makes  my  lips  sore.  Then,  too,  my  mouth 
isn't  big  enough  for  me  to  "tongue"  it  properly. 
When  I  told  Dinky-Dunk  this  he  said : 

"Of  course  it  isn't!  What  d'you  suppose  I've 
been  calling  you  Boca  Chica  for?" 

And  I've  just  discovered  "Boca  Chica"  is  Span 
ish  for  "Little  Mouth" — and  me  with  a  trap,  Ma 
tilda  Anne,  that  you  used  to  call  the  Cave  of  the 
Winds!  Now  Dinky-Dunk  vows  he'll  have  a  Vic- 
trola  before  the  winter  is  over !  Ye  gods  and  little 
fishes,  what  a  luxury!  There  was  a  time,  not  so 
long  ago,  when  I  was  rather  inclined  to  sniff  at  the 
Westbury's  electric  player-piano  and  its  cabinet  of 
neatly  canned  classics !  How  life  humbles  us !  And 
how  blind  all  women  are  in  their  ideals  and  their 
search  for  happiness!  The  sea-stones  that  lie  so 
bright  on  the  shores  of  youth  can  dry  so  dull  in 
the  hand  of  experience!  And  yet,  as  Birdalone's 
65 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Nannie  once  announced,  "If  you  thuck  'em  thej? 
2hay  boo-ful!"  And  I  guess  it  must  be  a  good 
deal  the  same  with  marriage.  You  can't  even  af 
ford  to  lay  down  on  your  job  of  loving.  The  more 
we  ask,  the  more  we  must  give.  I've  just  been 
thinking  of  those  days  of  my  fiercely  careless  child 
hood  when  my  soul  used  to  float  out  to  placid  hap 
piness  on  one  piece  of  plum-cake — only  even  then, 
alas,  it  floated  out  like  a  polar  bear  on  its  iceberg, 
for  as  that  plum-cake  vanished  my  peace  of  mind 
went  with  it,  madly  as  I  clung  to  the  last  crumb. 
But  now  that  I'm  an  old  married  woman  I  don't 
intend  to  be  a  Hamlet  in  petticoats.  A  good  man 
loves  me,  and  I  love  him  back.  And  I  intend  to 
keep  that  love  alive. 


Friday  the  Third 

I  HAVE  just  issued  an  ultimatum  as  to  pigs. 
There  shall  be  no  more  loose  porkers  wander 
ing  about  my  dooryard.  It's  an  advertisement  of 
bad  management.  And  what's  more,  when  I  was 
hanging  out  my  washing  this  morning  a  shote 
rooted  through  my  basket  of  white  clothes  with  his 
dirty  nose,  and  while  I  made  after  him  his  big 
brother  actually  tried  to  eat  one  of  my  wet  table- 
napkins.  And  that  meant  another  hour's  hard  work 
before  the  damage  was  repaired. 


Saturday  the  Fourth 

OLIE  is  painting  the  shack,  inside  and  out,  and 
now  you'd  never  know  our  poor  little  Joseph- 
coat  home.  I  told  Dinky-Dunk  if  we'd  ever 
put.  a  chameleon  on  that  shack-wall  he'd  have  died 
of  brain-fag  trying  to  make  good  on  the  color- 
schemes.  So  Dinky-Dunk  made  Olie  take  a  day  off 
and  ply  the  brush.  But  the  smell  of  paint  made 
me  think  of  Channel  passages,  so  off  I  went  with 
Dinky-Dunk,  a  la  team  and  buckboard,  to  the  Dixon 
Ranch  to  see  about  some  horses,  nearly  seventy 
miles  there  and  back.  It  was  a  glorious  autumn 
day,  and  a  glorious  ride,  with  "Bronk"  and  "Tum 
ble-Weed"  loping  along  the  double-trail  and  the  air 
like  crystal. 

Dinky-Dunk  and  I  sang  most  of  the  way.     The 

gophers   must  have  thought  we  were  mad.      My 

lord  and  master  is  incontinently  proud  of  his  voice, 

especially  the  chest-tones,  but  he  rather  tails  be- 

68 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

hind  me  on  the  tune,  plainly  not  always  being  suit 
of  himself.  We  had  dinner  with  the  Dixons,  and 
about  three  million  flies.  They  gave  me  the  blues, 
that  family,  and  especially  Mrs.  Dixon.  She  seemed 
to  make  prairie-life  so  ugly  and  empty  and  hard 
ening.  Poor,  dried-up,  sad-eyed  soul,  she  looked 
like  a  woman  of  sixty,  and  yet  her  husband  said 
she  was  just  thirty-seven.  Their  water  is  strong 
with  alkali,  and  this  and  the  prairie  wind  (combined 
with  a  something  deep  down  in  her  own  make-up) 
have  made  her  like  a  vulture,  lean  and  scrawny  and 
dry.  I  stared  at  that  hard  line  of  jaw  and  cheek 
bone  and  wondered  how  long  ago  the  soft  curves 
were  there,  and  if  those  overworked  hands  had 
ever  been  pretty,  and  if  that  flat  back  had  ever 
been  rounded  and  dimpled.  Her  hair  was  untidy. 
Her  apron  was  unspeakably  dirty,  and  she  used 
it  as  both  a  handkerchief  and  a  hand-towel.  Her 
voice  was  as  hard  as  nails,  and  her  cooking  was 
wretched.  Not  a  door  or  window  was  screened,  and, 
as  I  said  before,  we  were  nearly  smothered  with 


69 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Dinky-Dunk  did  not  dare  to  look  at  me,  all  dinner 
time.  And  on  the  way  home  Mrs.  Dixon's  eyes  kept 
haunting  me,  they  seemed  so  tired  and  vacant  and 
accusing,  as  though  they  were  secretly  holding  God 
Himself  to  account  for  cheating  her  out  of  her 
woman's  heritage  of  joy.  I  asked  Dinky-Dunk  if 
we'd  ever  get  like  that.  He  said,  "Not  on  your 
life !"  and  quoted  the  Latin  phrase  about  mind  con 
trolling  matter.  The  Dixons,  he  went  on  to  ex 
plain,  were  of  the  "slum"  type,  only  they  didn't 
happen  to  live  in  a  city.  But  tired  and  sleepy  as 
I  was  that  night,  I  got  up  to  cold-cream  my  face 
and  arms.  And  I'm  going  to  write  for  almond- 
meal  and  glycerin  from  the  mail-order  house  to 
morrow.  And  a  brassiere — for  I  saw  what  looked 
like  the  suspicion  of  a  smile  on  Dinky-Dunk's  un 
shaven  lips  as  he  watched  me  struggling  into  my 
corsets  this  morning.  It  took  some  writhing,  and 
even  then  I  could  hardly  make  it.  I  threw  my  wet 
sponge  after  him  when  he  turned  back  in  the  door 
way  with  the  mildly  impersonal  question:  "Who's 
your  fat  friend?"  Then  he  scooted  for  the  corral, 
70 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

and  I  went  back  and  studied  my  chin  in  the  dresser* 
mirror,  to  make  sure  it  wasn't  getting  terraced  into 
a  dew-lap  like  Uncle  Carlton's. 

But  I  can't  help  thinking  of  the  Dixons,  and  feel 
ing  foolishly  and  helplessly  sorry  for  them.  It 
was  dusk  when  we  got  back  from  that  long  drive 
to  their  ranch,  and  the  stars  were  coming  out.  I 
could  see  our  shack  from  miles  off,  a  little  lonely 
dot  of  black  against  the  sky-line.  T  made  Dinky- 
Dunk  stop  the  team,  and  we  sat  and  looked  at  it. 
It  seemed  so  tiny  there,  so  lonely,  so  strange,  in 
the  middle  of  such  miles  and  miles  of  emptiness, 
with  a  little  rift  of  smoke  going  up  from  its  deso 
late  little  pipe-end.  Then  I  said,  out  loud,  "Home! 
My  home !"  And  out  of  a  clear  sky,  for  no  earthly 
reason,  I  began  to  cry  like  a  baby.  Women  are 
such  fools,  sometimes  !  I  told  Dinky-Dunk  we  must 
get  books,  good  books,  and  spend  the  long  winter 
evenings  reading  together,  to  keep  from  going  to 
seed. 

He  said,  "All  right,  Gee-Gee,"  and  patted  my 
Vnee.  Then  we  loped  on  along  the  trail 

n 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

the  lonely  little  black  dot  ahead  of  us.  But  I  hung 
on  to  Dinky-Dunk's  arm,  all  the  rest  of  the  way, 
until  we  pulled  up  beside  the  shack,  and  poor  old 
Olie,  with  a  frying-pan  in  his  hand,  stood  silhou 
etted  against  the  light  of  the  open  door. 


Monday  the  Sixth 

THE  last  few  days  I've  been  nothing  but  a  two- 
footed  retriever,  scurrying  off  and  carrying  things 
back  home  with  me.  There  have  been  rains,  but 
the  weather  is  still  glorious.  And  I've  discovered 
such  heaps  and  heaps  of  mushrooms  over  at  the  old 
Titchborne  Ranch.  They're  thick  all  around  the 
corral  and  in  the  pasture  there.  I  am  now  what 
your  English  lord  and  master  would  call  "a  per 
fect  seat"  on  Paddy,  and  every  morning  I  ride 
over  after  my  basketful  of  Agaricus  Campestrls 
— that  ought  to  be  in  the  plural,  but  I've  forgotten 
how !  We  have  them  creamed  on  toast ;  we  have 
them  fried  in  butter;  and  we  have  them  in  soup— 
and  such  beauties !  I'm  going  to  try  and  can  some 
for  winter  and  spring  use.  But  the  finest  part 
of  the  mushroom  is  the  finding  it.  To  ride  into 
a  little  white  city  that  has  come  up  overnight  and 
looks  like  an  encampment  of  fairy  soldiers,  to  see 
73 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

the  milky  white  domes  against  the  vivid  green  of 
the  prairie-grass,  to  catch  sight  of  another  clump 
of  them,  suddenly,  like  stars  against  an  emerald 
sky,  a  hundred  yards  away,  to  inhale  the  clean 
morning  air,  and  feel  your  blood  tingle,  and  hear 
the  prairie-chickens  whir  and  the  wild-duck  scold- 
Ing  along  the  coulee-edges — I  tell  you,  Matilda 
Anne,  it's  worth  losing  a  little  of  your  beauty  sleep 
to  go  through  it !  I'm  awake  even  before  Dinky- 
Dunk,  and  I  brought  him  out  of  his  dreams  this 
morning  by  poking  his  teeth  with  my  little  finger 

and  saying: 

"Twelve  white  horses 
On  a  red  hill—" 

and  I  asked  him  if  he  knew  what  it  was,  and  he 
gave  the  right  answer,  and  said  he  hadn't  heard 
that  conundrum  since  he  was  a  boy. 

All  afternoon  I've  been  helping  Dinky-Dunk  put 
up  a  barb-wire  fence.  Barb-wire  is  nearly  as  hard 
as  a  woman  to  handle.  Dinky-Dunk  is  fencing  in 
some  of  the  range,  for  a  sort  of  cattle-run  for  our 
two  milk-cows.  He  says  it's  only  a  small  field, 
74 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

but  there  seemed  to  be  miles  and  miles  of  that  fenc 
ing.  We  had  no  stretcher,  so  Dinky-Dunk  made 
shift  with  me  and  a  claw-hammer.  He'd  catch  the 
wire,  lever  his  hammer  about  a  post,  and  I'd  drive 
in  the  staple,  with  a  hammer  of  my  own.  I  got 
so  I  could  hit  the  staple  almost  every  whack,  though 
one  staple  went  off  like  shrapnel  and  hit  Diddum's 
ear.  So  I'm  some  use,  you  see,  even  if  I  am  a 
chekako!  But  a  wire  slipped,  and  tore  through 
my  skirt  and  stocking,  scratched  my  leg  and  made 
the  blood  run.  It  was  only  the  tiniest  cut,  really, 
but  I  made  the  most  of  it,  Dinky-Dunk  was  so 
adorably  nice  about  doctoring  me  up.  We  came 
home  tired  and  happy,  singing  together,  and  Olie, 
as  usual,  must  have  thought  we'd  both  gone  mad. 
This  husband  of  mine  is  so  elementary.  He 
secretly  imagines  that  he's  one  of  the  most  complex 
of  men.  But  in  a  good  many  things  he's  as  simple 
as  a  child.  And  I  love  him  for  it,  although  I  be 
lieve  I  do  like  to  bedevil  him  a  little.  He  is  dig 
nified,  and  hates  flippancy.  So  when  I  greet  him 
with  "Morning,  old  boy !"  I  can  see  that  nameless 
75 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

little  shadow  sweep  over  his  face.  Then  I  say, 
"Oh,  I  beg  its  little  pardon !"  He  generally  grins, 
in  the  end,  and  I  think  I'm  slowly  shaking  that 
monitorial  air  out  of  him,  though  once  or  twice 
I've  had  to  remind  him  about  La  Rochefoucauld 
saying  gravity  was  a  stratagem  invented  to  conceal 
the  poverty  of  the  mind!  But  Dinky-Dunk  still 
objects  to  me  putting  my  finger  on  his  Adam's 
apple  when  he's  talking.  He  wears  a  flannel  shirt, 
when  working  outside,  and  his  neck  is  bare.  Yes 
terday  I  buried  my  face  down  in  the  corner  next 
to  his  shoulder-blade  and  made  him  wriggle.  As 
he  shaves  only  on  Sunday  mornings  now,  that  is 
about  the  only  soft  spot,  for  his  face  is  prickly., 
and  makes  my  chin  sore,  the  bearded  brute !  Then 
I  bit  him;  not  hard — but  Satan  said  bite,  and  I 
just  had  to  do  it.  He  turned  quite  pale,  swung 
me  round  so  that  I  lay  limp  in  his  arms,  and  closed 
his  mouth  over  mine.  I  got  away,  and  he  chased 
me.  We  upset  things.  Then  I  got  outside  the 
shack,  ran  around  the  horse-corral,  and  then  around 
the  hay-stacks,  with  Dinky-Dunk  right  after  me, 
76 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

giving  me  goose-flesh  at  every  turn.  I  felt  like  a 
cave-woman.  He  grabbed  me  like  a  stone-age  man 
and  caught  me  up  and  carried  me  over  his  shpulder 
to  a  pile  of  prairie  sweet-grass  that  had  been  left 
there  for  Olie's  mattress.  My  hair  was  down.  I 
was  screaming,  half  sobbing  and  half  laughing. 
He  dropped  me  in  the  hay,  like  a  bag  of  wheat.  I 
started  to  fight  him  again.  But  I  couldn't  beat  him 
off.  Then  all  my  strength  seemed  to  go.  He  was 
laughing  himself,  but  it  frightened  me  a  little  to 
see  his  pupils  so  big  that  his  eyes  looked  black.  I 
felt  like  a  lamb  in  a  lion's  jaw,  Dinky-Dunk  is 
so  much  stronger  than  I  am.  I  lay  there  quite 
still,  with  my  eyes  closed.  I  went  flop.  I  knew  I 
was  conquered. 

Then  I  came  back  to  life.  I  suddenly  realized 
that  it  was  mid-day,  in  the  open  air  between  the 
bald  prairie-floor  and  God's  own  blue  sky,  where 
Olie  could  stumble  on  us  at  any  moment — and  pos 
sibly  die  with  his  boots  on !  Dinky-Dunk  was  kiss 
ing  my  left  eyelid.  It  was  a  cup  his  lips  just 
seemed  to  fit  into.  I  tried  to  move.  But  he  held 
77 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

me  there.  He  held  me  so  firmly  that  it  hurt.  Yet 
I  couldn't  help  hugging  him.  Poor,  big,  foolish, 
baby-hearted  Dinky-Dunk !  And  poor,  weak,  crazy, 
storm-tossed  me!  But,  oh,  God,  it's  glorious,  in 
some  mysterious  way,  to  stir  the  blood  of  a  strong 
big  man !  It's  heaven — and  I  don't  quite  know  why. 
But  I  love  to  see  Dinky-Dunk's  eyes  grow  black. 
Yet  it  makes  me  a  little  afraid  of  him.  I  can  hear 
his  heart  pound,  sometimes,  quite  distinctly.  And 
sometimes  there  seems  something  so  pathetic  about 
it  all — we  are  such  puny  little  mites  of  emotion 
played  on  by  nature  for  her  own  immitigable  ends ! 
But  every  woman  wants  to  be  loved.  Dinky-Dunk 
asked  me  why  I  shut  my  eyes  when  he  kisses  me. 
I  wonder  why?  Sometimes,  too,  he  says  my  kisses 
are  wicked,  and  that  he  likes  'em  wicked.  He's 
a  funny  mixture.  He's  got  the  soul  of  a  Scotch 
Calvinist  tangled  up  in  him  somewhere,  and  after 
the  storm  he's  very  apt  to  grow  pious  and  a  bit 
preachy.  But  he  has  feelings,  only  he's  ashamed 
of  them.  I  think  I'm  taking  a  little  of  the  ice- 
crust  off  his  emotions.  He's  a  stiff  clay  that  needs 
78 


to  be  well  stirred  up  and  turned  over  before  it  can 
mellow.  And  I  must  be  a  sandy  loam  that  wastes 
all  its  strength  in  one  short  harvest.  That  sounds, 
as  though  I  were  getting  to  be  a  real  farmer's  wife 
with  a  vast  knowledge  of  soils,  doesn't  it?  At 
any  rate  my  husband,  out  of  his  vast  knowledge 
of  me,  says  I  have  the  swamp-cedar  trick  of  flar 
ing  up  into  sudden  and  explosive  attractiveness. 
Then,  he  says,  I  shower  sparks.  As  I've  already 
told  him,  I'm  a  wild  woman,  and  will  be  hard  to 
tame,  for  as  Victor  Hugo  somewhere  says,  w€ 
women  are  only  perfected  devils ! 


Wednesday  the  Eighth 

I'VE  cut  off  my  hair,  right  bang  off.  When  I 
got  up  yesterday  morning  with  so  much  work  ahead 
of  me,  with  so  much  to  do  and  so  little  time  to  do 
it  in,  I  started  doing  my  hair.  I  also  started  think 
ing  about  that  Frenchman  who  committed  suicide 
after  counting  up  the  number  of  buttons  he  had 
to  button  and  unbutton  every  morning  and  eve 
ning  of  every  day  of  every  year  of  his  life.  I 
tried  to  figure  up  the  time  I  was  wasting  on  that 
mop  of  mine.  Then  the  Great  Idea  occurred  to  me. 

I  got  the  scissors,  and  in  six  snips  had  it  off, 
a  big  tangled  pile  of  brownish  gold,  rather  bleached 
out  by  the  sun  at  the  ends.  And  the  moment  I  saw 
it  there  on  my  dresser,  and  saw  my  head  in  the 
mirror,  I  was  sorry.  I  looked  like  a  plucked  crow. 
I  could  have  ditched  a  freight-train.  And  I  felt 
positively  light-headed.  But  it  was  too  late  for 
tears.  I  trimmed  off  the  ragged  edges  as  well  as 
80 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  could,  and  what  didn't  get  in  ray  eyes  got  down 
my  neck  and  itched  so  terribly  that  I  had  to  change 
my  clothes.  Then  I  got  a  nail-punch  out  of  Dinky- 
Dunk's  tool-kit,  and  heated  it  over  the  lamp  and 
gave  a  little  more  wave  to  that  two-inch  shock 
of  stubble.  It  didn't  look  so  bad  then,  and  when 
I  tried  on  Dinky-Dunk's  coat  in  front  of  the  glass 
I  saw  that  I  wouldn't  make  such  a  bad-looking  boy. 
But  I  waited  until  noon  with  my  heart  in  my 
mouth,  to  see  what  Dinky-Dunk  would  say.  What 
he  really  did  say  I  can't  write  here,  for  there  was 
a  wicked  swear- word  mixed  up  in  his  ejaculation 
of  startled  wonder.  Then  he  saw  the  tears  in  my 
eyes,  I  suppose,  for  he  came  running  toward  me 
with  his  arms  out,  and  hugged  me  tight,  and  said 
I  looked  cute,  and  all  he'd  have  to  do  would  be  to 
get  used  to  it.  But  all  dinner  time  he  kept  look 
ing  at  me  as  though  I  were  a  strange  woman,  and 
later  I  saw  him  standing  in  front  of  the  dresser, 
stooping  over  that  tragic  pile  of  tangled  yellow- 
brown  snakes.  It  reminded  me  of  a  man  stooping 
over  a  grave.  I  slipped  away  without  letting  him 
81 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

see  me.  But  this  morning  I  woke  him  up  early 
and  asked  him  if  he  still  loved  his  wife.  And  when 
he  vowed  he  did,  I  tried  to  make  him  tell  me  how 
much.  But  that  stumped  him.  He  compromised 
by  saying  he  couldn't  cheapen  his  love  by  defin 
ing  it  in  words ;  it  was  limitless.  I  followed  him 
out  after  breakfast,  with  a  hunger  in  my  heart 
which  bacon  and  eggs  hadn't  helped  a  bit,  and  told 
him  that  if  he  really  loved  me  he  could  tell  me 
how  much. 

He  looked  right  in  my  eyes,  a  little  pityingly, 
it  seemed  to  me,  and  laughed,  and  grew  solemn 
again.  Then  he  stooped  down  and  picked  up  a 
little  blade  of  prairie-grass,  and  held  it  up  in  front 
of  me. 

"Have  you  any  idea  of  how  far  it  is  from  the 
Rockies  across  to  the  Hudson  Bay  and  from  the 
Line  up  to  the  Peace  River  Valley?" 

Of  course  I  hadn't. 

"And  have  you  any  idea  of  how  many  millions 
of  acres  of  land  that  is,  and  how  many  millions 
82 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

of  blades  of  grass  like  this  there  are  in  each  acre?" 
he  soberly  demanded. 

And  again  of  course  I  hadn't. 

"Well,  this  one  blade  of  grass  is  the  amount 
of  love  I  am  able  to  express  for  you,  and  all  those 
other  blades  in  all  those  millions  of  acres  is  what 
love  itself  is  I" 

I  thought  it  over,  just  as  solemnly  as  he  had 
said  it.  I  think  I  was  satisfied.  For  when  my 
Dinky-Dunk  was  away  off  on  the  prairie,  work 
ing  like  a  nailer,  and  I  was  alone  in  the  shack,  I 
went  to  his  old  coat  hanging  there — the  old  coat 
that  had  some  subtle  aroma  of  Dinky-Dunkiness 
itself  about  every  inch  of  it — and  kissed  it  on  the 
sleeve. 

This  afternoon  as  Paddy  and  I  started  for  home 
with  a  pail  of  mushrooms  I  rode  face  to  face  with 
my  first  coyote.  We  stood  staring  at  each  other. 
My  heart  bounced  right  up  into  my  throat,  and 
for  a  moment  I  wondered  if  I  was  going  to  be  eaten 
by  a  starving  timber-wolf,  with  Dinky-Dunk  find- 
83 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ing  my  bones  picked  as  clean  as  those  animal-car 
casses  we  see  in  an  occasional  buffalo-wallow.  I 
kept  up  my  end  of  the  stare,  wondering  whether 
to  advance  or  retreat,  and  it  wasn't  until  that  coy 
ote  turned  tail  and  scooted  that  my  courage  came 
back.  Then  Paddy  and  I  went  after  him,  like  the 
wind.  But  we  had  to  give  up.  And  at  supper 
Dinky-Dunk  told  me  coyotes  were  too  cowardly  to 
come  near  a  person,  and  were  quite  harmless.  He 
said  that  even  when  they  showed  their  teeth,  the 
rest  of  their  face  was  apologizing  for  the  threat. 
And  before  supper  was  over  that  coyote,  at  least 
I  suppose  it  was  the  same  coyote,  was  howling  at 
the  rising  full  moon.  I  went  out  with  Dinky- 
Dunk's  gun,  but  couldn't  get  near  the  brute.  Then 
I  came  back. 

"Sing,  you  son-of-a-gun,  sing!"  I  called  out  to 
him  from  the  shack  door.  And  that  shocked  my 
lord  and  master  so  much  that  he  scolded  me,  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life.  And  when  I  poked  his 
Adam's  apple  with  my  finger  he  got  on  his  dig 
nity.  He  was  tired,  poor  boy,  and  I  should  have 
84 


THE    TRAIRIE    WIFE 

remembered  it.  And  when  I  requested  him  not  to 
stand  there  and  stare  at  me  in  the  hieratic  rigidity 
of  an  Egyptian  idol  I  could  see  a  little  flush  of 
anger  go  over  his  face.  He  didn't  say  anything. 
But  he  took  one  of  the  lamps  and  a  three-year-old 
Pall-Mali  Magazine  and  shut  himself  up  in  the 
bunk-house. 

Then  I  was  sorry. 

I  tip-toed  over  to  the  door,  and  found  it  was 
locked.  Then  I  went  and  got  my  mouth-organ 
and  sat  meekly  down  on  the  door-step  and  began 
to  play  the  Don't  Be  Cross  waltz.  I  dragged 
it  out  plaintively,  with  a  vox  humana  tremolo  on 
the  coaxing  little  refrain.  Finally  I  heard  a  smoth 
ered  snort,  and  the  door  suddenly  opened  and 
Dinky-Dunk  picked  me  up,  mouth-organ  and  all 
He  shook  me  and  said  I  was  a  little  devil,  and  I 
called  him  a  big  British  brute.  But  he  was  laugh 
ing  and  a  wee  bit  ashamed  of  his  temper  and  was 
very  nice  to  me  all  the  rest  of  the  evening. 

I'm  getting,  I  find,  to  depend  a  great  deal  on 
Dinky-Dunk,  and  it  makes  me  afraid,  sometimes, 
85 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

for  the  future.  He  seems  able  to  slip  a  hand  un 
der  my  heart  and  lift  it  up,  exactly  as  though  it 
were  the  chin  of  a  wayward  child.  Yet  I  resent 
his  power,  and  keep  elbowing  for  more  breathing- 
space,  like  a  rush-hour  passenger  in  the  subway 
crowd.  Sometimes,  too,  I  resent  the  over-solemn 
streak  in  his  mental  make-up.  He  abominates  rag 
time,  and  I  have  rather  a  weakness  for  it.  So 
once  or  twice  in  his  dour  days  I've  found  an  al 
most  Satanic  delight  in  singing  The  Humming 
Coon.  And  the  knowledge  that  he'd  like  to  for 
bid  me  singing  rag  seems  to  give  a  zest  to  it.  So 
I  go  about  flashing  my  saber  of  independence : 

"OF  Ephr'm  Johnson  was  a  deacon  of  de  church  in 

Tennessee, 
An'  of  course  it  was  ag'inst  de  rules  t'  sing  rag-time 

melodee !" 

But  I  am  the  one,  I  notice,  who  always  makes 
up  first.  To-night  as  I  was  making  cocoa  before 
we  went  to  bed  I  tried  to  tell  my  Diddums  there 
was  something  positively  doglike  in  my  devotion 
to  him.  He  nickered  like  a  pony  and  said  he  was 
86 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

the  dog  in  this  deal.  Then  he  pulled  me  over  on 
his  knee  and  said  that  men  get  short-tempered  when 
they  were  tuckered  out  with  worry  and  hard  work, 
and  that  probably  it  would  be  hard  for  even  two 
of  the  seraphim  always  to  get  along  together  in 
a  two-by-four  shack,  where  you  couldn't  even  have, 
a.  dead-line  for  the  sake  of  dignity.  It  was  mostly 
his  fault,  he  knew,  but  he  was  going  to  try  to  fight 
igainst  it.  And  I  experienced  the  unreasonable 
joy  of  an  unreasonable  woman  who  has  succeeded 
in  putting  the  man  she  loves  with  all  her  heart 
and  soul  in  the  wrong.  So  I  could  afford  to  be 
humble  myself,  and  make  a  foolish  lot  of  fuss  over 
him.  But  I  shall  always  fight  for  my  elbow-room. 
For  there  are  times  when  my  Dinky-Dunk,  for  all 
his  bigness  and  strength,  has  to  be  taken  sedately 
in  tow,  the  same  as  a  racing  automobile  has  to  be 
hauled  through  the  city  streets  by  a  dinky  little 
jow-power  hack-car ! 


WE'VE  had  a  cold  spell,  with  heavy  frosts  at 
night,  but  the  days  are  still  glorious.  The  over 
cast  days  are  so  few  in  the  West  that  I've  been 
wondering  if  the  optimism  of  the  Westerners  isn't 
really  due  to  the  sunshine  they  get.  Who  could 
be  gloomy  under  such  golden  skies?  Every  pore 
of  my  body  has  a  throat  and  is  shouting  out  a 
Tarentella  Sincere,  of  its  own !  But  it  isn't  the 
weather  that  has  keyed  me  up  this  time.  It's  an 
other  wagon-load  of  supplies  which  Olie  teamed 
out  from  Buckhorn  yesterday.  I've  got  wall-paper 
and  a  new  iron  bed  for  the  annex,  and  galvanized 
wash-tubs  and  a  crock-churn  and  storm-boots  and 
enough  ticking  to  make  ten  big  pillows,  and  un 
bleached  linen  for  two  dozen  slips — I  love  a  big  pil 
low — and  I've  been  saving  up  wild-duck  feathers  for 
weeks,  the  downiest  feathers  you  ever  sank  your  ear 
into,  Matilda  Anne ;  and  if  pillows  will  do  it  I'm  go 
ing  to  make  this  house  look  like  a  harem !  Can  you 
88 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

imagine  a  household  with  only  three  pillow-slips, 
which  had  to  be  jerked  off  in  the  morning,  washed, 
dried  and  ironed  and  put  back  on  their  three  lonely 
little  pillows  before  bedtime?  Well,  there  will  be 
no  more  of  that  in  this  shack. 

But  the  important  news  is  that  I've  got  a  duck- 
gun,  the  duckiest  duck-gun  you  ever  saw,  and  wad 
ers,  and  a  coon-skin  coat  and  cap  and  a  big  leather 
school-bag  for  wearing  over  my  shoulder  on  Paddy. 
The  coat  and  cap  are  like  the  ones  we  used  to  laugh 
at  when  we  went  up  to  Montreal  for  the  tobog 
ganing,  in  the  days  when  I  was  young  and  foolish 
and  willing  to  sacrifice  comfort  on  the  altar  of  out 
ward  appearances.  The  coon-skins  make  me  look 
like  a  Laplander,  but  they'll  be  mighty  comfy  when 
the  cold  weather  comes,  for  Dinky-Dunk  says  it 
drops  to  forty  and  fifty  below,  sometimes. 

I  also  got  a  lot  of  small  stuff  I'd  written  for 
from  the  mail-order  house,  little  feminine  things 
a  woman  simply  has  to  have.  But  the  big  thing 
was  the  duck-gun. 

I  no  longer  get  heart  failure  when  I  hear  the 
89 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

whir  of  a  prairie-chicken,  but  drop  my  bird  be« 
fore  it's  out  of  range.  Poor,  plump,  wounded, 
warm-bodied  little  feathery  things !  Some  of  them 
keep  on  flying  after  they've  been  shot  clean  through 
the  body,  going  straight  on  for  a  couple  of  hundred 
feet,  or  even  more,  and  then  dropping  like  a  stone. 
How  hard-hearted  we  soon  get !  It  used  to  worry  me. 
Now  I  gather  'em  up  as  though  they  were  so  many 
chips  and  toss  them  into  the  wagon-box;  or  into 
my  school-bag,  if  it's  a  private  expedition  of  only 
Paddy  and  me.  And  that's  the  way  life  treats  us, 
too. 

I've  been  practising  on  the  gophers  with  my  new 
gun,  and  with  Dinky-Dunk's  .22  rifle.  A  gopher 
is  only  a  little  bigger  than  a  chipmunk,  and  usually 
pokes  nothing  more  than  his  head  out  of  his  hole, 
so  when  I  got  thirteen  out  of  fifteen  shots  I  began 
to  feel  that  I  was  a  sharp-shooter.  But  don't  re 
gard  this  as  wanton  cruelty,  for  the  gopher  is 
worse  than  a  rat,  and  in  this  country  the  govern 
ment  agents  supply  homesteaders  with  an  annual 
tilowance  of  free  strychnine  to  poison  them  off. 


Sunday  the  Eleventh 

I'VE  made  my  first  butter,  be  it  recorded — but 
in  doing  so  I  managed  to  splash  the  ceiling  and 
the  walls  and  my  own  woolly  head,  for  I  didn't 
have  sense  enough  to  tie  a  wet  cloth  about  the 
handle  of  the  churn-dasher  until  the  damage  had 
been  done.  I  was  too  intent  on  getting  my  butter 
to  pay  attention  to  details,  though  it  took  a  dis 
heartening  long  time  and  my  arms  were  tired  out 
before  I  had  finished.  And  when  I  saw  myself 
spattered  from  head  to  foot  it  reminded  me  of 
what  you  once  said  about  me  and  my  reading,  that 
I  had  the  habit  of  coming  out  of  a  book  like  a 
spaniel  out  of  water,  scattering  ideas  as  I  came. 
But  there  are  not  many  new  books  in  my  life  these 
days.  It  is  mostly  hard  work,  although  I  reminded 
Dinky-Dunk  last  night  that  while  Omar  intimated 
that  love  and  bread  and  wine  were  enough  for  any 
wilderness,  we  mustn't  forget  that  he  also  included 
91 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

a  book  of  verses  underneath  the  bough !  My  lord 
says  that  by  next  year  we  can  line  our  walls  with 
books.  But  I'm  like  Moses  on  Mount  Nebo — I 
can  see  my  promised  land,  but  it  seems  a  terribly 
long  way  off.  But  this,  as  Dinky-Dunk  would  say, 
is  not  the  spirit  that  built  Rome,  and  has  carried 
me  away  from  my  butter,  the  making  of  which 
cold-creamed  my  face  until  I  looked  as  though  I 
had  snow  on  my  headlight.  Yet  there  is  real  joy 
in  finding  those  lovely  yellow  granules  in  the  bottom 
of  your  churn  and  then  working  it  over  and  ovev 
with  a  saucer  in  a  cooking-bowl  until  it  is  one  golden 
mass.  Several  times  before  I'd  shaken  up  sour 
cream  in  a  sealer,  but  this  was  my  first  real  butter- 
making.  I  have  just  discovered,  however,  that  I 
didn't  "wash"  it  enough,  so  that  all  the  butter 
milk  wasn't  worked  out  of  my  first  dairy-product. 
Dinky-Dunk,  like  the  scholar  and  gentleman  that 
he  is,  swore  that  it  was  worth  its  weight  in  Klon 
dike  gold.  And  next  time  I'll  do  better. 


Monday  the  Twelfth 

GOLDEN  weather  again,  with  a  clear  sky  and  soft 
and  balmy  air !  Just  before  our  mid-day  meal  Olie 
arrived  with  mail  for  us.  We've  had  letters  from 
home!  Instead  of  cheering  me  up  they  made  me 
blue,  for  they  seemed  to  bring  word  from  another 
world,  a  world  so  far,  far  away ! 

I  decided  to  have  a  half-day  in  the  open,  so  I 
strapped  on  my  duck-gun  and  off  I  went  on  Paddy, 
as  soon  as  dinner  was  over  and  the  men  had  gone. 
We  went  like  the  wind,  until  both  Paddy  and  I 
were  tired  of  it.  Then  I  found  a  "soft-water" 
pond  hidden  behind  a  fringe  of  scrub-willow  and 
poplar.  The  mid-day  sun  had  warmed  it  to  a 
tempting  temperature.  So  I  hobbled  Paddy,  peeled 
off  and  had  a  most  glorious  bath.  I  had  just 
soaped  down  with  bank-mud  (which  is  an  astonish 
ingly  good  solvent)  and  had  taken  a  header  and 
was  swimming  about  on  my  back,  blinking  up  at 
93 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

the  blue  sky,  as  happy  as  a  mud-turtle  in  a  mill- 
pond,  when  I  heard  Paddy  nicker.  That  disturbed 
me  a  little,  but  I  felt  sure  there  could  be  nobody 
within  miles  of  me.  However,  I  swam  back  to  where 
my  clothes  were,  sunned  myself  dry,  and  was  just 
standing  up  to  shake  out  the  ends  of  this  short- 
cropped  hair  of  mine  when  I  saw  a  man's  head 
(icross  the  pond,  staring  through  the  bushes  at  me. 
I  don't  know  how  or  why  it  is,  but  I  suddenly 
saw  red.  I  don't  remember  picking  up  the  duck- 
gun,  and  I  don't  remember  aiming  it. 

But  I  banged  away,  with  both  barrels,  straight 
at  that  leering  head — or  at  least  it  ought  to  have 
been  a  leering  head,  whatever  that  may  mean !  The 
howl  that  went  up  out  of  the  wilderness,  the  next 
moment,  could  have  been  heard  for  a  mile! 

It  was  Dinky-Dunk,  and  he  said  I  might  have 
put  his  eyes  out  with  bird-shot,  if  he  hadn't  made 
the  quickest  drop  of  his  life.  And  he  also  said 
that  he'd  seen  me,  a  distinct  splash  of  white  against 
the  green  of  the  prairie,  three  good  miles  away, 
and  wasn't  I  ashamed  of  myself,  and  what  would 
94 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  have  done  if  he'd  been  Olie  or  old  man  Dixon? 
But  he  kissed  my  shoulder  where  the  gun-stock  had 
bruited  it,  and  helped  me  dress. 

Then  we  rode  off  together,  four  or  five  miles 
north,  where  Dinky-Dunk  was  sure  we  could  get  a 
bag  of  duck.  Which  we  did,  thirteen  altogether, 
and  started  for  home  as  the  sun  got  low  and  the 
evening  air  grew  chilly.  It  was  a  heavenly  ride. 
In  the  west  a  little  army  of  thin  blue  clouds  was 
edged  with  blazing  gold,  and  up  between  them 
spread  great  fan-like  shafts  of  amber  light.  Then 
came  a  riot  of  orange  yellow  and  ashes  of  roses 
and  the  palest  of  gold  with  little  islands  of  azure 
in  it.  Then  while  the  dying  radiance  seemed  to 
hold  everything  in  a  luminous  wash  of  air,  the  stars 
came  out,  one  by  one,  and  a  soft  cool  wind  swept 
across  the  prairie,  and  the  light  darkened — and  I 
was  glad  to  have  Dinky-Dunk  there  at  my  side, 
or  I  should  have  had  a  little  cry,  for  the  twilight 
prairie  always  makes  me  lonesome  in  a  way  that 
could  never  be  put  into  words. 

I  tried  to  explain  the  feeling  to  Dinky-Dunk. 
95 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

He  said  he  understood.  "I'm  a  Sour-Dough,  Gee- 
Gee,  but  it  still  gets  me  that  way,"  he  solemnly  con 
fessed.  He  said  that  when  he  listened  to  beautiful 
music  he  felt  the  same.  And  that  got  me  think 
ing  of  grand  opera,  and  of  that  Romeo  and  Ju 
liet  night  at  La  Scala,  in  Milan,  when  I  first  met 
Theobald  Gustav.  Then  I  stopped  to  tell  Dinky- 
Dunk  that  I'd  been  hopelessly  in  love  with  a  tenor 
at  thirteen  and  had  written  in  my  journal:  "I 
shall  die  and  turn  to  dust  still  adoring  him."  Then 
I  told  him  about  my  first  opera,  Rlgoletto,  and 
hummed  "La  Donna  E  Mobile,"  which  of  course 
he  remembered  himself.  It  took  me  back  to  Flor 
ence,  and  to  a  box  at  the  Pagliano,  and  me  all  in 
dimity  and  cork-screw  curls,  weeping  deliciously 
at  a  lady  in  white,  whose  troubles  I  could  not  quite 
understand.  Then  I  got  thinking  of  New  York 
and  the  Metropolitan,  and  poor  old  Morris's  lines: 

And  still  with  listening  soul  I  hear 
Strains  hushed  for  many  a  noisy  year: 
The  passionate  chords  which  wake  the  tear, 
The  low-voiced  love-tales  dear.    .    .    . 

96 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Scarce  changed,  the  same  musicians  play 
The  selfsame  themes  to-day ; 
The  silvery  swift  sonatas  ring, 
The  soaring  voices  sing ! 

And  I  could  picture  the  old  Metropolitan  on  a 
Caruso  night.  I  could  see  the  Golden  Horse-Shoe 
and  the  geranium-red  trimmings  and  the  satiny 
white  backs  of  the  women,  and  smell  that  luxurious 
heavy  smell  of  warm  air  and  hothouse  flowers  and 
Paris  perfumery  and  happy  human  bodies  and  hear 
the  whisper  of  silk  along  the  crimson  stairways. 
I  could  see  the  lights  go  down,  in  a  sort  of  sigh, 
before  the  overture  began,  and  the  scared-looking 
blotches  of  white  on  the  musicians'  scores  and  the 
other  blotches  made  by  their  dress-shirt  fronts,  and 
the  violins  going  up  and  down,  up  and  down,  as 
though  they  were  one  piece  of  machinery,  and  then 
the  heavy  curtain  stealing  up,  and  the  thrill  as 
that  new  heaven  opened  up  to  me,  a  gawky  girl 
in  her  first  low-cut  dinner  gown ! 

I  told  Dinky-Dunk  I'd  sat  in  every  corner  of 
that  old  house,  up  in  the  sky-parlor  with  the  Ital- 
97 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ian  barbers,  in  press-seats  in  the  second  gallery 
with  dear  old  Fanny-Rain-in-thc-Face,  and  in  the 
Westbury's  box  with  the  First  Lady  of  the  Land 
and  a  Spanish  Princess  with  extremely  dirty  nails. 
It  seemed  so  far  away,  another  life  and  another 
world!  And  for  three  hours  of  "Manon"  I'd  be 
willing  to  hang  like  a  chimpanzee  from  the  Met 
ropolitan's  center  chandelier.  I  suddenly  realized 
how  much  I  missed  it.  I  could  have  sung  to  the 
City  as  poor  Charpentier's  "Louise"  sang  to  her 
Paris.  And  a  coyote  howled  up  near  the  trail,  and 
the  prairie  got  dark,  with  a  pale  green  rind  of 
light  along  the  northwest,  and  I  knew  there  would 
be  a  heavy  frost  before  morning. 

To-night  after  supper  my  soul  and  I  sat  down 
and  did  a  bit  of  bookkeeping.  Dinky-Dunk,  who'd 
been  watching  me  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye, 
went  to  the  window  and  said  it  looked  like  a  storm. 
And  I  knew  he  meant  that  I  was  the  Medicine  Hat 
it  was  to  come  from,  for  before  he'd  got  up  from 
the  table  he'd  explained  to  me  that  matrimony  was 
like  motoring  because  it  was  really  traveling  by 
98 


means  of  a  series  of  explosions.  Then  he  tried 
to  explain  that  in  a  few  weeks  the  fall  rush  would 
be  over  and  we'd  have  more  time  for  getting  what 
we  deserved  out  of  life.  But  I  turned  on  him  with 
sudden  fierceness  and  declared  I  wasn't  going  to 
be  merely  an  animal.  I  intended  to  keep  my  soul 
alive,  that  it  was  every  one's  duty,  no  matter  where 
they  were,  to  ennoble  their  spirit  by  keeping  in 
touch  with  the  best  that  has  ever  been  felt  and 
thought. 

When  I  grimly  got  out  my  mouth-organ  and 
played  the  Pilgrim's  Chorus,  as  well  as  I  could 
remember  it,  Dinky-Dunk  sat  listening  in  silent 
wonder.  He  kept  up  the  fire,  and  waited  until  I 
got  through.  Then  he  reached  for  the  dishpan 
and  said,  quite  casually,  "I'm  going  to  help  you 
wash  up  to-night,  Gee-Gee!"  And  so  I  put  away 
the  mouth-organ  and  washed  up.  But  before  I 
went  to  bed  I  got  out  my  little  vellum  edition  of 
Browning's  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  and  read 
at  it  industriously,  doggedly,  determinedly,  for  a 
solid  hour.  What  it's  all  about  I  don't  know.  In- 
99 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

stead  of  ennobling  my  spirit  it  only  tired  ray  brain 
and  ended  up  in  making  me  so  mad  I  flung  the 
book  into  the  wood-box.  .  .  .  Dinky-Dunk  has 
just  pinned  a  piece  of  paper  on  my  door;  it  is  a 
sentence  from  Epictetus.  And  it  says:  "Better 
it  is  that  great  souls  should  live  in  small  habitations 
than  that  abject  slaves  should  burrow  in  great 
houses !" 


100 


Sunday  the  Eighteenth 

I  SPENT  an  hour  to-day  trying  to  shoot  a  hen- 
hawk  that's  been  hovering  about  the  shack  all  aft 
ernoon.  He's  after  my  chickens,  and  as  new-laid 
eggs  are  worth  more  than  Browning  to  a  home 
steader,  I  got  out  my  duck-gun.  It  gave  me  a 
feeling  of  impending  evil,  having  that  huge  bird 
hanging  about.  It  reminded  me  there  was  wrong 
and  rapine  in  the  world.  I  hated  the  brute.  But 
I  hid  under  one  of  the  wagon-boxes  and  got  him, 
in  the  end.  I  brought  him  down,  a  tumbling  flurry 
of  wings,  like  Satan's  fall  from  Heaven.  When 
I  ran  out  to  possess  myself  of  his  Satanic  body 
he  was  only  wounded,  however,  and  was  ready  to 
show  fight.  Then  I  saw  red  again.  I  clubbed  him 
with  the  gun-butt,  going  at  him  like  fury.  I  was 
moist  with  perspiration  when  I  got  through  with 
him.  He  was  a  monster.  I  nailed  him  with  his 
wings  out,  on  the  bunk-house  wall,  and  Olie  shouted 
101 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

and  called  Dinky-Dunk  when  they  came  back  from 
rounding  up  the  horses,  which  had  got  away  on  the 
range.  Dinky-Dunk  solemnly  warned  me  not  to 
run  risks,  as  he  might  have  taken  an  eye  out,  or 
torn  my  face  with  his  claws.  He  said  he  could 
have  stuffed  and  mounted  my  hawk,  if  I  hadn't 
clubbed  the  poor  thing  almost  to  pieces.  There's 
a  devil  in  me  somewhere,  I  told  Dinky-Dunk. 
he  only  laughed. 


102 


Monday  the  Nineteenth 

TO-NIGHT  Dinky-Dunk  and  I  spent  a  solid  hour 
trying  to  decide  on  a  name  for  the  shack.  I  wanted 
to  call  it  "Crucknacoola,"  which  is  Gaelic  for  "A 
Little  Hill  of  Sleep,"  but  Dinky-Dunk  brought 
forward  the  objection  that  there  was  no  hill.  Then 
I  suggested  "Barnavista,"  since  about  all  we  can 
see  from  the  door  are  the  stables.  Then  I  said 
"The  Builtmore,"  in  a  spirit  of  mockery,  and  then 
Dinky-Dunk  in  a  spirit  of  irony  suggested  "Casa 
Grande."  And  in  the  end  we  united  on  "Casa 
Grande."  It  is  marvelous  how  my  hair  grows. 
Olie  now  watches  me  studiously  as  I  eat.  I  can 
see  that  he  is  patiently  patterning  his  table  de 
portment  after  mine.  There's  nothing  that  silent 
rough-mannered  man  wouldn't  do  for  me.  I've 
got  so  I  never  notice  his  nose,  any  more  than  I 
used  to  notice  Uncle  Carlton's  receding  chin.  Bui 
103 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  don't  think  Olle  is  getting  enough  to  eat.  All 
his  mind  seems  taken  up  with  trying  to  remember 
not  to  drink  out  of  his  saucer,  as  history  sayeth 
George  Washington  himself  once  did! 


104 


Tuesday  the  Twentieth 

I  KNEW  that  old  hen-hawk  meant  trouble  for  me 
— and  the  trouble  came,  all  right.  I'm  afraid  I 
can't  tell  about  it  very  coherently,  but  this  is  how 
it  began:  I  was  alone  yesterday  afternoon,  busy 
in  the  shack,  when  a  Mounted  Policeman  rode  up 
to  the  door,  and,  for  a  moment,  nearly  frightened 
the  life  out  of  me.  I  just  stood  and  stared  at  him, 
for  he  was  the  first  really,  truly  live  man,  outside 
Olie  and  my  husband,  I'd  seen  for  so  long.  And 
he  looked  very  dashing  in  his  scarlet  jacket  and 
yellow  facings.  But  I  didn't  have  long  to  meditate 
on  his  color  scheme,  for  he  calmly  announced  that 
a  ranchman  named  McMein  had  been  murdered  by 
a  drunken  cowboy  in  a  wage  dispute,  and  the  mur 
derer  had  been  seen  heading  for  the  Cochrane 
Ranch.  He  (the  M.  P.)  inquired  if  I  would  object 
to  his  searching  the  buildings. 

Would  I  object?  I  most  assuredly  did  not,  for 
105 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

little  chills  began  to  play  up  and  down  my  spinal 
column,  and  I  wasn't  exactly  in  love  with  the  idea 
of  having  an  escaped  murderer  crawling  out  of  a 
hay-stack  at  midnight  and  cutting  my  throat.  The 
ranchman  McMein  had  been  killed  on  Saturday, 
and  the  cowboy  had  been  kept  on  the  run  for  two 
days.  As  I  was  being  told  this  I  tried  to  remem 
ber  where  Dinky-Dunk  had  stowed  away  his  re 
volver-holster  and  his  hammerless  ejector  and  his 
Colt  repeater.  But  I  made  that  handsome  young 
man  in  the  scarlet  coat  come  right  into  the  shack 
and  begin  his  search  by  looking  under  the  bed,  and 
then  going  down  the  cellar. 

I  stood  holding  the  trap-door  and  warned  him 
not  to  break  my  pickle-jars.  Then  he  came  up 
and  stood  squinting  thoughtfully  out  through  the 
doorway. 

"Have  you  got  a  gun?"  he  suddenly  asked  me. 

I  showed  him  my  duck-gun  with  its  silver  mount 
ings,  and  he  smiled  a  little. 

"Haven't  you  a  rifle?"  he  demanded. 

I  explained  that  my  husband  had,  and  he  stil 
106 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

stood  squinting  out  through  the  doorway  as  I 
poked  about  the  shack-corners  and  found  Dinky- 
Dunk's  repeater.  He  was  a  very  authoritative  and 
self-assured  young  man.  He  took  the  rifle  from 
me,  examined  the  magazine  and  made  sure  it  was 
loaded.  Then  he  handed  it  back. 

"I've  got  to  search  those  buildings  and  stacks," 
he  told  me.  "And  I  can  only  be  in  one  place  at 
once.  If  you  see  a  man  break  from  under  cover 
anywhere,  when  I'm  inside,  be  so  good  as  to  shoot 
him!" 

He  started  oft  without  another  word,  with  his 
big  army  revolver  in  his  hand.  My  teeth  began 
to  do  a  little  fox-trot  all  by  themselves. 

"Wait !  Stop !"  I  shouted  after  him.  "Don't 
go  away !" 

He  stopped  and  asked  me  what  was  wrong.  "I 
— I  don't  want  to  shoot  a  man!  I  don't  want  to 
shoot  any  man !"  I  tried  to  explain  to  him. 

i{You  probably  won't  have  to,"  was  his  cool  re 
sponse.  "But  it's  better  to  do  that  than  have  him 
shoot  you,  isn't  it?" 

107 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Whereupon  Mr.  Red-Coat  made  straight  jf'or  the 
hay-stacks,  and  I  stood  in  the  doorway,  with 
Dinky-Dunk's  rifle  in  my  hands  and  my  knees  shak 
ing  a  little. 

I  watched  him  as  he  beat  about  the  hay-stacks. 
Then  I  got  tired  of  holding  the  heavy  weapon  and 
leaned  it  against  the  shack-wall.  I  watched  the 
red  coat  go  in  through  the  stable  door,  and  felt 
vaguely  dismayed  at  the  thought  that  its  wearer 
was  now  quite  out  of  sight. 

Then  my  heart  stopped  beating.  For  out  of 
a  pile  of  straw  which  Olie  had  dumped  not  a  hun 
dred  feet  away  from  the  house,  to  line  a  pit  for 
our  winter  vegetables,  a  man  suddenly  erupted. 
He  seemed  to  come  up  out  of  the  very  earth,  like 
a  mushroom. 

He  was  the  most  repulsive-looking  man  I  ever 
had  the  pleasure  of  casting  eyes  on.  His  clothes 
were  ragged  and  torn  and  stained  with  mud.  His 
face  was  covered  with  stubble  and  his  cheeks  were 
hollow,  and  his  skin  was  just  about  the  color  of  a 
new  saddle. 

108 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIPE 

I  could  see  the  whites  of  his  eyes  as  he  ran  for 
the  shack,  looking  over  his  shoulder  toward  the 
stable  door  as  he  came.  He  had  a  revolver  in  his 
hand.  I  noticed  that,  but  it  didn't  seem  to  trouble 
me  much.  I  suppose  I'd  already  been  frightened 
as  much  as  mortal  flesh  could  be  frightened.  In 
fact,  I  was  thinking  quite  clearly  what  to  do,  and 
didn't  hesitate  for  a  moment. 

"Put  that  silly  thing  down,"  I  told  him,  as  he 
ran  up  to  me  with  his  head  lowered  and  that  in 
describably  desperate  look  in  his  big  frightened 
eyes.  "If  you're  not  a  fool  I  can  get  you  hidden," 
I  told  him.  It  reassured  me  to  see  that  his  knees 
were  shaking  much  more  than  mine,  as  he  stood 
there  in  the  center  of  the  shack!  I  stooped  over 
the  trap-door  and  lifted  it  up.  "Get  down  there 
quick !  He's  searched  that  cellar  and  won't  go 
through  it  again.  Stay  there  until  I  say  he's 
gone !" 

He  slipped  over  to  the  trap-door  and  went  slowly 
down  the  steps,  with  his  eyes  narrowed  and  his 
revolver  held  up  in  front  of  him,  as  though  he  still 
109 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

half  expected  to  find  some  one  there  to  confront 
him  with  a  blunderbuss.  Then  I  promptly  shut  the 
trap-door.  But  there  was  no  way  of  locking  it. 

I  had  my  murderer  there,  trapped,  but  the  ques 
tion  was  to  keep  him  there.  Your  little  Chaddie 
didn't  give  up  many  precious  moments  to  reverie. 
I  tiptoed  into  the  bedroom  and  lifted  the  mattress, 
bedding  and  all,  off  the  bedstead.  I  tugged  it  out 
and  put  it  silently  down  over  the  trap-door.  Then, 
without  making  a  sound,  I  turned  the  table  over 
on  it.  But  he  could  still  lift  that  table,  I  knew, 
even  with  me  sitting  on  top  of  it.  So  I  started  to 
pile  things  on  the  overturned  table,  until  it  looked 
like  a  moving-van  ready  for  a  May-Day  migration. 
Then  I  sat  on  top  of  that  pile  of  household  goods, 
reached  for  Dinky-Dunk's  repeater,  and  deliber 
ately  fired  a  shot  up  through  the  open  door. 

I  sat  there,  studying  my  pile,  feeling  sure  a  re 
volver  bullet  couldn't  possibly  come  up  through  all 
that  stuff.  But  before  I  had  much  time  to  think 
about  this  my  corporal  of  the  R.  N.  W.  M.  P. 
110 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

(which  means,  Matilda  Anne,  the  Royal  North- 
West  Mounted  Police)  came  through  the  door  on 
the  run.  He  looked  relieved  when  he  saw  me  tri 
umphantly  astride  that  overturned  table  loaded  up 
with  about  all  my  household  junk. 

"I've  got  him  for  you,"  I  calmly  announced. 

"You've  got  what  ?"  he  said,  apparently  thinking 
I'd  gone  mad. 

"I've  got  your  man  for  you,"  I  repeated.  "He's 
down  there  in  my  cellar."  And  in  one  minute  I'd 
explained  just  what  had  happened.  There  was  no 
parley,  no  deliberation,  no  hesitation. 

"Hadn't  you  better  go  outside,"  he  suggested  as 
he  started  piling  the  things  off  the  trap-door. 

"You're  not  going  down  there?"  I  demanded. 

"Why  not?"  he  asked. 

"But  he's  got  a  revolver,"  I  cried  out,  "and  he's 
sure  to  shoot!" 

"That's  why  I  think  it  might  be  better  for  you 
to  step  outside  for  a  moment  or  two,"  was  my  sol 
dier  boy's  casual  answer. 
Ill 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  walked  over  and  got  Dinky-Dunk's  repeater. 
Then  I  crossed  to  the  far  side  of  the  shack,  with 
the  rifle  in  my  hands. 

"I'm  going  to  stay,"  I  announced. 

"All  right,"  was  the  officer's  unconcerned  answer 
as  he  tossed  the  mattress  to  one  side  and  with  one 
quick  pull  threw  up  the  trap-door. 

A  shot  rang  out,  from  below,  as  the  door  swung 
back  against  the  wall.  But  it  was  not  repeated,  for 
the  man  in  the  red  coat  jumped  bodily,  heels  first, 
into  that  black  hole.  He  didn't  seem  to  count  on  the 
risk,  or  on  what  might  be  ahead  of  him.  He  just 
jumped,  spurs  down,  on  that  other  man  with  the 
revolver  in  his  hand.  I  could  hear  little  grunts, 
and  wheezes,  and  a  thud  or  two  against  the  cellar 
steps.  Then  there  was  silence,  except  for  one 
double  "click-click"  which  I  couldn't  understand. 

Oh,  Matilda-  Anne,  how  I  watched  that  cellar 
opening !  And  I  saw  a  back  with  a  red  coat  on  it 
slowly  rise  out  of  the  hole.  He,  the  man  who 
owned  the  back  of  course,  was  dragging  the  other 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

man  bodily  up  the  narrow  little  stairs.  There 
was  a  pair  of  handcuffs  already  on  his  wrists  and 
he  seemed  dazed  and  helpless,  for  that  slim-looking 
soldier  boy  had  pummeled  him  unmercifully,  knock 
ing  out  his  two  front  teeth,  one  of  which  I  found 
on  the  doorstep  when  I  was  sweeping  up. 

"I'm  sorry,  but  I'll  have  to  take  one  of  your 
horses  for  a  day  or  two,"  was  all  my  R.  N.  W.  M. 
P.  hero  condescended  to  say  to  me  as  he  poked  an 
arm  through  his  prisoner's  and  helped  him  out 
through  the  door. 

"What— what  will  they  do  with  him?"  I  called 
out  after  the  corporal. 

"Hang  him,  of  course,"  was  the  curt  answer. 

Then  I  sat  down  to  think  things  over,  and,  like  an 
old  maid  with  the  vapors,  decided  I  wouldn't  be 
any  the  worse  for  a  cup  of  good  strong  tea.  And 
by  the  time  I'd  had  my  tea,  and  straightened  things 
up,  and  incidentally  discovered  that  no  less  than 
five  of  my  cans  of  mushrooms  had  been  broken  to 
bits  below-stairs,  I  heard  the  rumble  of  the  wagon 
113 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

and  knew  that  Olie  and  Dinky-Dunk  were  back. 
And  I  drew  a  long  breath  of  relief,  for  with  all  their 
drawbacks,  men  are  not  a  bad  thing  to  have  about, 
now  and  then ! 


114 


Thursday  the  Twenty-second 

IT  was  early  Tuesday  morning  that  Dinky-Dunk 
firmly  announced  that  he  and  I  were  going  off  on  a 
three-day  shooting-trip.  I  hadn't  slept  well,  the 
night  before,  for  my  nerves  were  still  rather  upset, 
and  Dinky-Dunk  said  I  needed  a  picnic.  So  we 
got  guns  and  cartridges  and  blankets  and  slickers 
and  cooking  things,  and  stowed  them  away  in  the 
wagon-box.  Then  we  made  a  list  of  the  provisions 
we'd  need,  and  while  Dinky-Dunk  bagged  up  some 
oats  for  the  team  I  was  busy  packing  the  grub~box. 
And  I  packed  it  cram  full,  and  took  along  the  old 
tin  bread-box,  as  well,  with  pancake  flour  and  dried 
fruit  and  an  extra  piece  of  bacon — and  bacon  it  is 
now  called  in  this  shack,  for  I  have  positively  for 
bidden  Dinky-Dunk  ever  to  speak  of  it  as  "sow 
belly"  or  even  as  a  "slice  of  grunt"  again. 

Then  off  we  started  across  the  prairie,  after  duly 
instructing  Olie  as  to  feeding  the  chickens  and  tak- 
115 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ing  care  of  the  cream  and  finishing  up  the  pit  for 
the  winter  vegetables.  Still  once  again  Olie 
thought  we  were  both  a  little  mad,  I  believe,  for  we 
had  no  more  idea  where  we  were  going  than  the 
man  in  the  moon. 

But  there  was  something  glorious  in  the  thought 
of  gipsying  across  the  autumn  prairie  like  that, 
without  a  thought  or  worry  as  to  where  we  must 
stop  or  what  trail  we  must  take.  It  made  every 
day's  movement  a  great  adventure.  And  the 
leather  was  divine. 

We  slept  at  night  under  the  wagon-box,  with  a 
tarpaulin  along  one  side  to  keep  out  the  wind,  and 
a  fire  flickering  in  our  faces  on  the  other  side,  and 
the  horses  tethered  out,  and  the  stars  wheeling  over 
head,  and  the  peace  of  God  in  our  hearts.  How 
good  every  meal  tasted !  And  how  that  keen  sharp 
air  made  snuggling  down  under  a  couple  of  Hudson 
Bay  five-point  blankets  a  luxury  to  be  spoken  of 
only  in  the  most  reverent  of  whispers !  And  there 
was  a  time,  as  you  already  know,  when  I  used  to 
take  bromide  and  sometimes  even  sulphonal  to  make 
116 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

me  sleep !  But  here  it  is  so  different !  To  get  leg- 
weary  in  the  open  air,  tramping  about  the  sedgy 
slough-sides  after  mallard  and  canvas-back,  to  smell 
coffee  and  bacon  and  frying  grouse  in  the  cool  of 
the  evening,  across  a  thin  veil  of  camp-fire  smoke, 
to  see  the  tired  world  turn  over  on  its  shoulder  and 
go  to  sleep — it's  all  a  sort  of  monumental  lullaby. 
The  prairie  wind  seems  to  seek  you  out,  and  make 
a  bet  with  the  Great  Dipper  that  he'll  have  you  off 
in  forty  winks,  and  the  orchestra  of  the  spheres 
whispers  through  its  million  strings  and  sings  your 
soul  to  rest.  For  I  tell  you  here  and  now,  Matilda 
Anne,  I,  poor,  puny,  good-for-nothing,  insignifi 
cant  I,  have  heard  that  music  of  the  spheres  as 
clearly  as  you  ever  heard  Funiculi-Funicula  on 
that  little  Naples  steamer  that  used  to  take  you  to 
Capri.  And  when  I'd  crawl  out  from  under  that 
old  wagon-box,  like  a  gopher  out  of  his  hole,  in  the 
first  delicate  rosiness  of  dawn,  I'd  feel  unutterably 
grateful  to  be  alive,  to  hear  the  cantatas  of  health 
singing  deep  in  my  soul,  to  know  that  whatever  life 
may  do  to  me,  I'd  snatched  my  share  of  happiness 
117 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

from  the  pantry  of  the  gods !  And  the  endless 
change  of  color,  from  the  tawny  fox-glove  on  the 
lighter  land,  the  pale  yellow  of  a  lion's  skin  in 
the  slanting  autumn  sun,  to  the  quavering,  shim 
mering  glories  of  the  Northern  Lights  that  dance 
in  the  north,  that  fling  out  their  banners  of  ruby 
and  gold  and  green,  and  tremble  and  merge  and 
pulse  until  I  feel  that  I  can  hear  the  clash  of  invisi' 
ble  cymbals.  I  wonder  if  you  can  understand  my 
feeling  when  I  pulled  the  hat-pin  out  of  my  old 
gray  Stetson  yesterday,  uncovered  my  head,  and 
looked  straight  up  into  the  blue  firmament  above 
me.  Then  I  said,  "Thank  you,  God,  for  such  a 
beautiful  day!" 

Dinky-Dunk  promptly  said  that  I  was  blasphem 
ous — he's  so  strict  and  solemn !  But  as  I  stared  up 
into  the  depths  of  that  intense  opaline  light,  so 
clear,  so  pure,  I  realized  how  air,  just  air  and 
nothing  else,  could  leave  a  scatter-brained  lady  like 
me  half-seas  over.  Only  it's  a  champagne  that 
never  leaves  you  with  a  headache  the  next  day  1 


118 


Saturday  the  Twenty-fourth 

DINKY-DUNK,  who  seems  intent  on  keeping  my 
mind  occupied,  brought  me  home  a  bundle  of  old 
magazines  last  night.  They  were  so  frayed  and 
thumbed-over  that  some  of  the  pages  reminded  me 
of  well-worn  bank-notes.  I've  been  reading  some  of 
the  stories,  and  they  all  seem  silly.  Everybody  ap 
pears  to  be  in  love  with  somebody  else's  wife.  Then 
the  people  are  all  divided  so  strictly  into  two  classes, 
the  good  and  the  bad !  As  for  the  other  man's  wife, 
prairie-life  would  soon  knock  that  nonsense  out  of 
people.  There  isn't  much  room  for  the  Triangle 
in  a  two-by-four  shack.  Life's  so  normal  and  nat 
ural  and  big  out  here  that  a  Pierre  Loti  would  be 
kicked  into  a  sheep-dip  before  he  could  use  up 
his  first  box  of  face-rouge!  You  want  your  own 
wife,  and  want  her  so  bad  you're  satisfied.  Not 
that  Dinky-Dunk  and  I  are  so  goody-goody !  We're 
pust  healthy  and  human,  that's  all.  and  we'd  never 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

do  for  fiction.  After  meals  we  push  away  the 
dishes  and  sit  side  by  side,  with  our  arms  across 
each  other's  shoulders,  full  of  the  joy  of  life,  sat 
isfied,  happy,  healthy-minded,  now  and  then  a  little 
Rabelaisian  in  our  talk,  meandering  innocent-eyed 
through  those  earthier  intimacies  which  most  mar 
ried  people  seem  to  face  without  shame,  so  long  as 
the  facing  is  done  in  secret.  We  don't  seem  ashamed 
of  that  terribly  human  streak  in  us.  And  neither  of 
us  is  bad,  at  heart.  But  I  know  we're  not  like  those 
magazine  characters,  who  all  seem  to  have  Florida- 
water  instead  of  red  blood  in  their  veins,  and  are  so 
far1,  far  away  from  life. 

Yet  even  that  dip  into  politely  erotic  fictio» 
seemed  to  canalize  my  poor  little  grass-grown  mind 
into  activity,  and  Diddums  and  I  sat  up  until  the 
wee  sona'  hours  discoursing  on  life  and  letters.  He 
started  me  off  by  somewhat  pensively  remarking 
that  all  women  seem  to  want  to  be  intellectual  and 
have  ai  salon. 

"No,  Dinky-Dunk,  I  don't  want  a  salon,"  I 
promptly  announced.  "I  never  did  want  one,  for 
120 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  don't  believe  they  were  as  exciting  as  we  imagine. 
And  I  hate  literary  people  almost  as  much  as  I 
hate  actors.  I  always  felt  they  were  like  stage- 
scenery,  not  made  for  close  inspection.  For  after 
five  winters  in  New  York  and  a  couple  in  London 
you  can't  help  bumping  into  the  Bohemian  type, 
not  to  mention  an  occasional  collision  with  'em  up 
and  down  the  Continent.  When  they're  female  they 
always  seem  to  wear  the  wrong  kind  of  corsets.  And 
when  they're  male  they  watch  themselves  in  the  mir 
rors,  or  talk  so  much  about  themselves  that  you 
haven't  a  chance  to  talk  about  yourself — which  is 
really  the  completest  definition  of  a  bore,  isn't  it? 
I'd  much  rather  know  them  through  their  books  than 
through  those  awful  Sunday  evening  soirees  where 

poor  old  leonine  M used  to  perspire  reading 

those  Socialist  poems  of  his  to  the  adoring  ladies, 
and  Sanguinary  John  used  to  wear  the  same  flannel 
shirt  that  shielded  him  from  the  Polar  blasts  up  in 
Alaska — open  at  the  throat,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing,  just  like  a  movie-actor  cowboy,  only  John 
had  grown  a  little  stout  and  he  kept  spoiling  the 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Strong-Man  picture  by  so  everlastingly  posing  a| 
one  end  of  the  grand-piano!  You  know  the  way 
they  do  it,  one  pensive  elbow  on  the  piano-end  and 
the  delicately  drooping  palm  holding  up  the  weary 
brains,  the  same  as  you  prop  up  a  King-orange 
bough  when  it  gets  too  heavy  with  fruit !  And  then 
he  had  a  lovely  bang  and  a  voice  like  a  maiden-lady 
from  Maine.  And  take  it  from  me,  O  lord  and  mas 
ter,  that  man  devoured  all  his  raw  beef  and  blood  on 
his  typewriter-ribbon.  I  dubbed  him  the  King 
of  the  Eye-Socket  school,  and  instead  of  getting 
angry  he  actually  thanked  me  for  it.  That  was 
the  sort  of  advertising  he  was  after." 

Dinky-Dunk  grinned  a  little  as  I  rattled  on.  Then 
he  grew  serious  again.  "Why  is  it,"  he  asked,  "a 
writer  in  Westminster  Abbey  is  always  a  genius, 
but  a  writer  in  the  next  room  is  rather  a  joke?" 

I  tried  to  explain  it  for  him.  "Because  writers 
are  like  Indians.  The  only  good  ones  are  the  dead 
ones.  And  it's  the  same  with  those  siren  affinitie? 
of  history.  Annie  Laurie  lived  to  be  eighty,  though 
the  ballad  doesn't  say  so.  And  Lady  Hamilton  die/ 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

poor  and  ugly  and  went  around  with  red  herrings 
in  her  pocket.  And  Cleopatra  was  really  a  red 
headed  old  political  schemer,  and  Paris  got  tired 
of  Helen  of  Troy.  Which  means  that  history,  like 
literature,  is  only  Le  mensonge  convenu!" 

This  made  Dinky-Dunk  sit  up  and  stare  at  me. 
"Look  here,  Gee-Gee,  I  don't  mind  a  bit  of  book- 
learning,  but  I  hate  to  see  you  tear  the  whole 
tree  of  knowledge  up  by  the  roots  and  knock  me 
down  with  it!  And  it  was  salons  we  were  talking 
about,  and  not  the  wicked  ladies  of  the  past !" 

"Well,  the  only  salon  I  ever  saw  in  America  had 
the  commercial  air  of  a  millinery  opening  where  tea 
happened  to  be  served,"  I  promptly  declared.  "And 
the  only  American  woman  I  ever  knew  who  wanted 
to  have  a  salon  was  a  girl  we  used  to  call  Asafet- 
ida  Anne.  And  if  I  explained  why  you'd  make  a 
much  worse  face  than  that,  my  Diddums.  But  she 
had  a  weakness  for  black  furs  and  never  used  to 
wash  her  neck.  So  the  Plimpton  Mark  was  always 
there !" 

"Don't  get  bitter,  Gee-Gee,"  announced  Dinky- 
123 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Dunk  as  he  proceeded  to  light  his  pipe.  And  I  could 
afford  to  laugh  at  his  solemnity. 

"I'm  not  bitter,  Honey  Chile;  I'm  only  glad  I 
got  away  from  all  that  Bohemian  rubbish.  You 
may  call  me  a  rattle-box,  and  accuse  me  of  being 
temperamental  now  and  then — which  I'm  not — but 
the  one  thing  in  life  which  I  love  is  sanity.  And 
that,  Dinky-Dunk,  is  why  I  love  you,  even  though 
you  are  only  a  big  sunburnt  farmer  fighting  and 
planning  and  grinding  away  for  a  home  for  an 
empty-headed  wife  who's  going  to  fail  at  every 
thing  but  making  you  love  her!" 

Then  followed  a  few  moments  when  I  wasn't 
able  to  talk, 

.    .    .    The  sequel's  scarce  essential — 
Nay,  more  than  this,  I  hold  it  still 
Profoundly  confidential ! 

Then  as  we  sat  there  side  by  side  I  got  thinking 
of  the  past  and  of  the  Bohemians  before  whom  I 
had  once  burned  incense.  And  remembering  a  cer 
tain  visit  to  Box  Hill  with  Lady  Agatha's  mother, 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

years  and  years  ago,  I  had  to  revise  my  verdict  on 
authors,  for  one  of  the  warmest  memories  in  all 
my  life  is  that  of  dear  old  Meredith  in  his  wheel 
chair,  with  his  bearded  face  still  flooded  with  its 
kindly  inner  light  and  his  spirit  still  mellow  with  its 
unquenchable  love  of  life.  And  once  as  a  child,  I 
went  on  to  tell  Dinky-Dunk,  I  had  met  Stevenson. 
It  was  at  Mentone,  and  I  can  still  remember  him 
leaning  over  and  taking  my  hand.  His  own  hand 
was  cold  and  lean,  like  a  claw,  and  with  the  quick 
instinct  of  childhood  I  realized,  too,  that  he  was 
condescending  as  he  spoke  to  me,  for  all  the  laugh 
that  showed  the  white  teeth  under  his  drooping 
black  mustache.  Wrong  as  it  seemed,  I  didn't 
like  him  any  more  than  I  afterward  liked  the  Sar 
gent  portrait  of  him,  which  was  really  an  echo  of 
my  own  first  impression,  though  often  and  often 
I've  tried  to  blot  out  that  first  unfair  estimate  of 
a  real  man  of  genius.  There's  so  much  in  the  Child's 
Garden  of  Verse  that  I  love ;  there's  so  much  in  the 
man's  life  that  demands  admiration,  that  it  seems 
125 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

wrong  not  to  capitulate  to  his  charm.  But  when 
one's  own  family  are  one's  biographers  it's  hard  to 
be  kept  human.  "Yet  there's  one  thing,  Dinky- 
Dunk,  that  I  do  respect  him  for,"  I  went  on.  "He 
had  seen  the  loveliest  parts  of  this  world,  and,  when 
he  had  to,  he  could  light-heartedly  give  it  all  up  and 
rough  it  in  this  American  West  of  ours,  even  as 
you  and  I !"  Whereupon  Dinky-Dunk  argued  that 
we  ought  to  forgive  an  invalid  his  stridulous 
preaching  about  bravery  and  manliness  and  his 
over-emphasis  of  fortitude,  since  it  was  plainly 
based  on  an  effort  to  react  against  a  constitutional 
weakness  for  which  he  himself  couldn't  be  blamed. 

And  I  confessed  that  I  could  forgive  him  more 
easily  than  I  could  Sanguinary  John  with  his  lit 
erary  Diabolism  and  that  ostentatious  stone-age 
blugginess  with  which  he  loved  to  give  the  ladies 
goose-flesh,  pretending  he  was  a  bull  in  a  china- 
shop  when  he's  really  only  a  white  mouse  in  an 
ink-pot !  And  after  Dinky-Dunk  had  knocked  out 
his  pipe  and  wound  up  his  watch  he  looked  over  at 
me  with  his  slow  Scotch-Canadian  smile.  "For  a 
126 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

couple  of  hay-seeds  who  have  been  harpooning  the 
salon  idea,"  he  solemnly  announced,  "I  call  this 
quite  a  literary  evening!"  But  what's  the  use  of 
having  an  idea  or  two  in  your  head  if  you  can't 
air  'em  now  and  then  ? 


Tuesday  the  Twenty-seventh 

TO-DAY  I  stumbled  on  the  surprise  of  my  life !  It 
was  A  Man !  I  took  Paddy  and  cantered  over  to  the 
old  Titchborne  Ranch  and  was  prowling  around  the 
corral,  hoping  I  might  find  a  few  belated  mush 
rooms.  But  nary  a  one  was  there.  So  I  whistled 
on  my  four  fingers  for  Paddy  (I've  been  teaching 
him  to  come  at  that  call)  and  happened  to  glance 
in  the  direction  of  the  abandoned  shack.  Then  I 
saw  the  door  open,  and  out  walked  a  man. 

He  was  a  young  man,  in  puttees  and  knickers  and 
Norfolk  jacket,  and  he  was  smoking  a  cigarette.  He 
stared  at  me  as  though  I  were  the  Missing  Link. 
Then  he  said  "Hello!"  rather  inadequately,  it 
seemed  to  me. 

I  answered  back  "Hello,"  and  wondered  whether 

to  take  to  my  heels  or  not.     But  my  courage  got 

its  second  wind,  and  I  stayed.  Then  we  shook  hands, 

very  formally,  and  explained  who  we  were.    And  I 

123 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE   • 

discovered  that  his  name  was  Percival  Benson 
Woodhouse  (and  the  Lord  forgive  me  if  they  ever 
call  him  Percy  for  short!)  and  that  his  aunt  is  tVie 
Countess  of  D  -  and  that  he  knows  a  number 
of  people  you  and  Lady  Agatha  have  often  spoken 
of.  He's  got  a  Japanese  servant  called  Kino,  or 
perhaps  it's  spelt  Keeno,  I  don't  know  which,  wiio's 
house-keeper,  laundress,  valet,  gardener,  groom  «»nd 
chef,  all  in  one,—  so,  at  least  Percival  Benson  con 
fessed  to  me.  He  also  confessed  that  he'd  bought 
the  Titchborne  Ranch,  from  photographs,  from 
"one  of  those  land  chaps"  in  London.  He  wanted 
to  rough  it  a  bit,  and  they  told  him  there  would  be 
jolly  good  game  shooting.  So  he  even  bought 

along  an  elephant-gun,  which  his  cousin  had  used 

I 

in  India.     The  photographs  which  the  "land 


had  showed  him  turned  out  to  be  pictures  ®f  the 
Selkirks.  And,  taking  it  all  in  all,  he  fancied  that 
he'd  been  jolly  well  bunked.  But  Percival  seemed 
to  accept  it  with  the  stoicism  of  the  well-born  Brit 
isher.  He'd  have  a  try  at  the  place,  alt-hougA  there 
was  no  game. 

129 


•  THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

"But  there  is  game,"  I  told  him,  "slathers  of  it, 
oodles  of  it !" 

He  mildly  inquired  where  and  what  ?  I  told  him : 
Wild  duck,  prairie-chicken,  wild  geese,  jack-rabbits, 
now  and  then  a  fox,  and  loads  of  coyotes.  He  ex 
plained,  then,  that  he  meant  big  game — and  how 
grandly  those  two  words,  "big  game,"  do  roll  off 
the  English  tongue!  He  has  a  sister  in  the  Ba 
hamas,  who  may  join  him  next  summer  if  he  should 
decide  to  stick  it  out.  He  considered  that  it  would 
be  a  bit  rough  for  a  girl,  during  the  winter  season 
up  here. 

Yet  before  I  go  any  further  I  must  describe 
Percival  Benson  Woodhouse  to  you,  for  he's  not 
only  "our  sort,"  but  a  type  as  well. 

In  the  first  place,  he's  a  Magdalen  College  man, 
the  sort  we've  seen  going  up  and  down  the  High 
many  and  many  a  time.  He's  rather  gaunt  and 
rather  tall,  and  he  stoops  a  little.  "At  home"  they 
call  it  the  "Oxford  stoop,"  if  I'm  not  greatly  mis 
taken.  His  hands  are  thin  and  long  and  bony. 
His  eyes  are  nice,  and  he  looks  very  good  form. 
130 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  mean  he's  the  sort  of  man  you'd  never  take  for 
the  "outsider"  or  "rotter."  He's  the  sort  Mrho  seem 
to  have  the  royal  privilege  of  doing  even  doubtfully 
polite  things  and  yet  doing  them  in  such  a  way  as 
to  make  them  seem  quite  proper.  I  don't  know 
whether  I  make  that  clear  or  not,  but  one  thing 
is  clear,  and  this  is  that  our  Percival  Benson  is  an 
aristocrat.  You  see  it  in  his  over-sensitive,  over- 
refined,  almost  womanishly  delicate  face,  with  those 
idealizing  and  quite  unpractical  eyes  of  his.  You 
see  it  in  the  thin,  high-arched,  bony  nose  (almost  as 
fine  a  beak  as  the  one  belonging  to  His  Grace,  the 

Duke  of  M !)   and  you  see  it  in  the  sad  and 

somewhat  elongated  face,  as  though  he  had  pored 
over  big  books  too  much,  a  sort  of  air  of  pathos 
and  aloofness  from  things.  His  mouth  strikes  you 
as  being  rather  meager,  until  he  smiles,  which  is 
quite  often,  for,  glory  be,  he  has  a  good  sense  of 
humor.  But  besides  that  he  has  a  neatness,  a  cool 
ness,  an  impersonal  sort  of  ease,  which  would  make 
you  think  that  he  might  have  stepped  out  of  one  of 
Henry  James's  earlier  novels  of  about  the  time  of 
131 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

the  Portrait  of  a  Lady.  And  I  like  him.  1  knew 
that  at  once.  He's  effete  and  old-worldish  and 
probably  useless,  out  here,  but  he  stands  for  some 
thing  I've  been  missing,  and  I'll  be  greatly  mis 
taken  if  Percival  Benson  and  Chaddie  McKail  are 
not  pretty  good  friends  before  the  winter's  over! 
He's  asked  if  he  might  be  permitted  to  call,  and  he's 
coming  for  dinner  to-morrow  night,  and  I  do  hope 
Dinky-Dunk  is  nice  to  him — if  we're  to  be  neigh 
bors.  But  Dinky-Dunk  says  Westerners  don't  ask 
fco  be  permitted  to  call.  They  just  stick  their  cay- 
use  into  the  corral  and  walk  in,  the  same  as  an 
Indian  does.  And  Dinky-Dunk  says  that  if  he 
comes  in  evening  dress  he'll  shoot  him,  sure  pop ! 


132 


Thursday  the  Twenty-ninth 

PERCY  (how  I  hate  that  name !)  was  here  for  din 
ner  last  night,  and  all  things  considered,  we  didn't 
fare  so  badly.  We  had  tomato  bisque  and  scal 
loped  potatoes  and  prairie-chicken  (they  need  to 
be  well  basted)  and  hot  biscuits  and  stewed  dried 
peaches  with  cream.  Then  we  had  coffee  and  the 
men  smoked  their  pipes.  We  talked  until  a  quarter 
to  one  in  the  morning,  and  my  poor  Dinky-Dunk, 
who  has  been  working  so  hard  and  seeing  nobody, 
really  enjoyed  that  visit  and  really  likes  Percival 
Benson. 

Percy  got  talking  about  Oxford,  and  you  could 
see  that  he  loved  the  old  town  and  that  he  felt  more 
at  home  on  the  Isis  than  on  the  prairie.  He  said 
he  once  heard  Freeman  tell  a  story  about  Goldwin 
Smith,  who  used  to  be  Regius  Professor  of  History 
at  the  University.  G.  S.  seemed  astonished  that  F. 
couldn't  tell  him,  at  some  viva  voce  exam,  whatever 
133 


that  may  mean,  the  cause  of  King  John's  death. 
Then  G.  S.  explained  that  poor  John  died  of  too 
much  peaches  and  fresh  ale,  "which  would  give  a 
man  considerable  belly-ache,"  the  Regius  Professor 
of  History  .solemnly  announced  to  Freeman. 

Percy  said  his  lungs  rather  troubled  him  in  Eng 
land,  and  he  has  spent  over  a  year  in  Florence  and 
Rome  and  can  talk  pictures  like  a  Grant  Allen 
guide-book.  And  he's  sat  through  many  an  opera 
at  La  Scala,  but  considered  the  Canadian  coyote 
a  much  better  vocalist  than  most  of  the  minor  Ital 
ian  tenors.  And  he  knows  Capri  and  Taormina  and 
says  he'd  like  to  grow  old  anc  die  in  Sicily.  He 
got  pneumonia  at  Messina,  and  nearly  died  young 
there  and  after  five  months  in  Switzerland  a  special 
ist  told  him  to  try  Canada. 

I've  noticed  that  one  of  the  delusions  of  Ameri 
cans  is  that  an  Englishman  is  silent.  Now,  my 
personal  conviction  is  that  Englishmen  are  the 
greatest  talkers  in  the  world,  and  I  have  Percy  to 
back  me  up  in  it.  In  fact,  we  sat  about  talking  so 
long  that  Percy  asked  if  he  couldn't  stay  all  night, 
134 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

as  he  was  a  poor  rider  and  wasn't  sure  of  the  trails 
as  yet.  So  we  made  a  shake-down  for  him  in  the 
living-room.  And  when  Dinky-Dunk  came  to  bed 
he  confided  to  me  that  Percy  was  calmly  reading 
and  smoking  himself  to  sleep,  out  of  my  sadly 
scorned  copy  of  The  Ring  and  the  Boole,  with 
the  lamp  on  the  floor,  on  one  side  of  him,  and  a 
saucer  on  the  other,  for  an  ash-tray.  But  he  was 
up  and  out  this  morning,  before  either  of  us  was 
stirring,  coming  back  to  Casa  Grande,  however, 
when  he  saw  the  smoke  at  the  chimney-top.  His 
thin  cheeks  were  quite  pink  and  he  apologetically 
explained  that  he'd  been  trying  for  an  hour  and  a 
half  to  catch  his  cayuse.  Olie  had  come  to  his  res 
cue.  But  our  thin-shouldered  Oxford  exile  sai(? 
that  he  had  never  seen  such  a  glorious  sunrise,  and 
that  the  ozone  had  made  him  a  bit  tipsy.  Speak 
ing  of  thin-shouldered  specimens,  Matilda  Anne,  I 
was  once  a  thirty-six ;  now  I  am  a  perfect  forty-two. 


135 


Friday  the  Fifth 

THE  weather  has  been  bad  all  this  week,  but  I've 
had  a-  great  deal  of  sewing  to  do,  and  for  two  days 
Dinky-Dunk  stayed  in  and  helped  me  fix  up  the 
shack.  I  made  more  book-shelves  out  of  more  old 
biscuit-boxes  and  my  lord  made  a  gun-rack  for 
our  fire-arms.  Percival  Benson  rode  over  once, 
through  the  storm,  and  it  took  us  half  an  hour  to 
thaw  him  out.  But  he  brought  some  books,  and 
says  he  has  four  cases,  altogether,  and  that  we're 
welcome  to  all  we  wish.  He  stayed  until  noon  the 
next  day,  this  time  sleeping  in  the  annex,  which 
Dinky-Dunk  and  I  have  papered,  so  that  it  looks 
quite  presentable.  But  as  yet  there  is  no  way  of 
heating  it.  Our  new  neighbor,  I  imagine,  is  very 
lonesome. 


136 


Sunday  the  Seventh 

THE  weather  has  cleared :  there's  a  chinook  arch 
in  the  sky,  and  a  sort  of  St.  Martin's-Summer  haze 
on  all  the  prairie.  But  there's  news  to-day.  Kino, 
our  new  neighbor's  Jap,  has  decamped  with  a  good 
deal  of  money  and  about  all  of  Percival  Benson's 
valuables.  The  poor  boy  is  almost  helpless,  but 
he's  not  a  quitter.  He  said  he  chopped  his  first 
kindling  to-day,  though  he  had  to  stand  in  a  wash- 
tub,  while  he  did  it,  to  keep  from  cutting  his  feet. 
Dinky-Dunk's  birthday  is  only  three  weeks  off,  and 
I'm  making  plans  for  a  celebration. 


137 


Tuesday  the  Ninth 

THE  days  slip  by,  and  scarcely  leave  me  time  to 
write.  Dinky-Dunk  is  a  sort  of  pendulum,  swing 
ing  out  to  work,  back  to  eat,  and  then  out,  and  then 
back  again.  Olie  is  teaming  in  lumber  and  galvan 
ized  iron  for  a  new  building  of  some  sort.  My 
lord,  in  the  evenings,  sits  with  paper  and  pencil, 
figuring  out  measurements  and  making  plans.  I 
sit  on  the  other  side  of  the  table,  as.  a  rule,  sewing. 
Sometimes  I  go  around  to  his  side  of  the  table,  and 
make  him  put  his  plans  away  for  a  few  minutes. 
We  are  very  happy.  But  where  the  days  fly  to 
I  scarcely  know.  We  are  always  looking  toward  the 
future,  talking  about  the  future,  "conceiting"  for 
the  future,  as  the  Irish  say.  Next  summer  is  to  be 
our  banner  year.  Dinky-Dunk  is  going  to  risk 
everything  on  wheat.  He's  like  a  general  plotting 
out  a  future  plan  of  campaign — for  when  the  work 
comes,  he  says,  it  will  come  in  a  rush.  Help  will  be 
138 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

hard  to  get,  so  he'll  sell  his  British  Columbia  tim 
ber  rights  and  buy  a  forty-horse-power  gasoline 
tractor.  He  will  at  least  if  gasoline  gets  cheaper, 
for  with  "gas"  still  at  twenty-six  cents  a  gallon 
horse-power  is  cheapest.  But  during  the  breaking 
season  in  April  and  May,  one  of  these  engines  can 
haul  eight  gang-plows  behind  it.  In  twenty-four 
hours  it  will  be  able  to  turn  over  thirty-five  acres 
of  prairie  soil — and  the  ordinary  man  and  team 
counts  two  acres  of  plowing  a  decent  day's  work. 

To-night  I  asked  Dinky-Dunk  why  he  risked 
everything  on  wheat  and  warned  him  that  we  might 
have  to  revise  the  old  Kansas  trekker's  slogan  to — 

"In  wheat  we  trusted, 
In  wheat  we  busted !" 

Dinky-Dunk  explained  that  to  keep  on  raising 
only  wheat  would  be  bad  for  the  land,  and  even 
now  meant  taking  a  chance,  but  situated  as  he  was 
it  brought  in  the  quickest  money.  And  he  wanted 
money  in  a  hurry,  for  he  had  a  nest  to  feather  for 
a  lady  wild-bird  that  he'd  captured — which  meant 
139 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

me.  Later  on  he  intends  to  go  in  for  flax — for  fiber 
and  not  for  seed — and  as  our  land  should  produce 
two  tons  of  the  finest  flax-straw  to  the  acre  and 
as  the  Belgian  and  Irish  product  is  now  worth  over 
four  hundred  dollars  a  ton,  he  told  me  to  sit  down 
and  figure  out  what  four  hundred  acres  would  pro 
duce,  with  even  a  two-third  crop. 

The  Canadian  farmer  of  the  West,  he  went  on 
to  explain,  mostly  grew  flax  for  the  seed  alone, 
burning  up  over  a  million  tons  of  straw  every  year, 
just  to  get  it  out  of  the  way,  the  same  as  he  does 
with  his  wheat-straw.  But  all  that  will  soon  be 
changed.  Only  last  week  Dinky-Dunk  wrote  to  the 
Department  of  Agriculture  for  information  about 
courtai  fiber — that's  the  kind  used  for  point-lace 
and  is  worth  a  dollar  a  pound — for  my  lord  feels 
convinced  his  soil  and  climatic  conditions  are  es 
pecially  suited  for  certain  of  the  finer  varieties. 
He  even  admitted  that  flax  would  be  better  on  his 
land  at  the  present  time,  as  it  would  release  certain 
of  the  natural  fertilizers  which  sometimes  leave  the 
virgin  soil  too  rich  for  wheat.  But  what  most 
140 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

impresses  me  about  Dinky-Dunk's  talk  was  his  ab 
solute  and  unshaken  faith  in  this  West  of  ours,  once 
it  wakes  up  to  its  opportunities.  It's  a  stored-up 
granary  of  wealth,  he  declares,  and  all  we've  done 
so  far  is  to  nibble  along  the  leaks  in  the  floor- 
cracks  ! 


Saturday  the  Twenty-first 

TO-DAY  is  Dinky-Dunk's  birthday.  He's  always 
thought,  of  course,  that  I'm  a  pauper,  and  never 
dreamed  of  my  poor  little  residuary  nest-egg.  I'd 
ordered  a  box  of  Okanagan  Valley  apples,  and  a 
gramophone  and  a  dozen  opera  records,  and  a  brier- 
wood  pipe  and  two  pounds  of  English  "Honey- 
Dew,"  and  a  smoking- jacket,  and  some  new  ties 
and  socks  and  shirts,  and  a  brand  new  Stetson,  for 
Dinky-Dunk's  old  hat  is  almost  a  rag-bag.  And  I 
ordered  half  a  dozen  of  the  newer  novels  and  a  set 
of  Herbert  Spencer  which  I  heard  him  say  he 
wanted,  and  a  sepia  print  of  the  Mona  Lisa  (which 
my  lord  says  I  look  like  when  I'm  planning  trou 
ble!)  and  a  felt  mattress  and  a  set  of  bed-springs 
(so  good-by,  old  sway -backed  friend  whose  humps 
have  bruised  me  in  body  and  spirit  this  many  a 
night!)  and  a  dozen  big  oranges  and  three  dozen 
little  candles  for  the  birthday  cake.  And  then  I 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

was  cleaned  out — every  blessed  cent  gone!  But 
Percy  (we  have,  you  see,  been  unable  to  escape  that 
name)  ordered  a  box  of  cigars  and  a  pair  of  quilted 
house-slippers,  so  it  was  a  pretty  formidable  array. 

I,  accordingly,  had  Olie  secretly  team  this  array 
all  the  way  from  Buckhorn  to  Percy's  house,  where 
it  was  duly  ambushed  and  entrenched,  to  await  the 
fatal  day.  As  luck  would  have  it,  or  seemed  to  have 
it,  Dinky-Dunk  had  to  hit  the  trail  for  overnight, 
to  see  about  the  registration  of  his  transfers  for 

his  new  half-section,  at  the  town  of  H .  So  as 

soon  as  Dinky-Dunk  was  out  of  sight  I  hurried 
through  my  work  and  had  Tumble- Weed  and  Bronk 
headed  for  the  old  Titchborne  Ranch. 

There  I  arrived  about  mid-afternoon,  and  what 
a  time  we  had,  getting  those  things  unpacked,  and 
looking  them  over,  and  planning  and  talking !  But 
the  whole  thing  was  spoilt. 

We  forgot  to  tie  the  horses.     So  while  we  were 

having  tea  Bronk  and  Tumble-Weed  hit  the  trail, 

on  their  own  hook.     They  made  for  home,  harness 

and  all,  but  of  course  I  never  knew  this  at  the  time. 

143 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

We  looked  and  looked,  came  back  for  supper,  and 
then  started  out  again.  We  searched  until  it  got 
dark.  My  feet  were  like  lead,  and  I  couldn't  have 
walked  another  mile.  I  was  so  stiff  and  tired  I 
simply  had  to  give  up.  Percy  worried,  of  course, 
for  we  had  no  way  of  sending  word  to  Dinky-Dunk. 
Then  we  sat  down  and  talked  over  possibilities,  like 
a  couple  of  castaways  on  a  Robinson  Crusoe  island. 
Percy  offered  to  bunk  in  the  stable,  and  let  me  have 
the  shack.  But  I  wouldn't  hear  of  that.  In  the 
first  place,  I  felt  pretty  sure  Percy  was  what  they 
call  a  "lunger"  out  here,  and  I  didn't  relish  the  idea 
of  sleeping  in  a  tuberculous  bed.  I  asked  for  a 
blanket  and  told  him  that  I  was  going  to  sleep  out 
under  the  wagon,  as  I'd  often  done  with  Dinky- 
Dunk.  Percy  finally  consented,  but  this  worried 
him  too.  He  even  brought  out  his  "big-game"  gun, 
so  I'd  have  protection,  and  felt  the  grass  to  see  if 
it  was  damp,  and  declared  he  couldn't  sleep  on  a 
mattress  when  he  knew  I  was  out  on  the  hard 
ground.  I  told  him  that  I  loved  it,  and  to  go  to 
144 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

bed,  for  I  wanted  to  get  out  of  some  of  my  armor- 
plate.     He  went,  reluctantly. 

It  was  a  beautiful  night,  and  not  so  cold,  with 
scarcely  a  breath  of  wind  stirring.  I  lay  looking 
out  through  the  wheel-spokes  at  the  Milky  Way, 
and  was  just  dropping  off  when  Percy  came  out 
still  again.  He  was  in  a  quilted  dressing-gown 
and  had  a  blanket  over  his  shoulders.  It  made  him 
look  for  all  the  world  like  Father  Time.  He  wanted 
to  know  if  I  was  all  right,  and  had  brought  me  out 
a  pillow — which  I  didn't  use.  Then  he  sat  down  on 
the  prairie-floor,  near  the  wagon,  and  smoked  and 
talked.  He  pointed  out  some  of  the  constellations 
to  me,  and  said  the  only  time  he'd  ever  seen  the 
stars  bigger  was  one  still  night  on  the  Indian  Ocean, 
when  he  was  on  his  way  back  from  Singapore.  He 
would  never  forget  that  night,  he  said,  the  stars 
were  so  wonderful,  so  big,  so  close,  so  soft  and  lumi 
nous.  But  the  northern  stars  were  different.  They 
were  without  the  orange  tone  that  belongs  to  the 
South.  They  seemed  remoter  and  more  awe-in- 
145 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

spiring,  and  there  was  always  a  green  tone  to  theii 
whiteness. 

Then  we  got  talking  about  "furrm  parts"  and 
Percy  asked  me  if  I'd  ever  seen  Naples  at  night 
from  San  Martino,  and  I  asked  him  if  he'd  ever 
seen  Broadway  at  night  from  the  top  of  the  Times 
Building.  Then  he  asked  me  if  I'd  ever  watched 
Paris  from  Montmartre,  or  seen  the  Temple  of 
Neptune  at  Passtum  bathed  in  Lucanian  moonlight 
— which  I  very  promptly  told  him  I  had,  for  it  was 
on  the  ride  home  from  Pa?stum  that  a  certain  per 
son  had  proposed  to  me.  We  talked  about  temples 
and  Greek  Gods  and  the  age  of  the  world  and  In 
dian  legends  until  I  got  downright  sleepy.  Then 
Percy  threw  away  his  last  cigarette  and  got  up. 
He  said  "Good  night;"  I  said  "Good  night;"  and 
he  went  into  the  shack.  He  said  he'd  leave  the  door 
open,  in  case  I  called.  There  were  just  the  two 
of  us,  between  earth  and  sky,  that  night,  and  not 
another  soul  within  a  radius  of  seven  miles  of  any 
side  of  us.  He  was  very  glad  to  have  some  one  to 
talk  to.  He's  probably  a  year  or  two  older  than 
146 


I  am,  but  I  am  quite  motherly  with  him.  And  he  is 
shockingly  incompetent,  as  a  homesteader,  from  the 
look  of  his  shack.  But  he's  a  gentleman,  almost  too 
"Gentle,"  I  sometimes  feel,  a  Laodicean,  mentally 
over-refined  until  it  leaves  him  unable  to  cope  with 
real  life.  He's  one  of  those  men  made  for  being  a 
"spectator,"  and  not  an  actor,  in  life.  And  there's 
something  so  absurd  about  his  being  where  he  is 
that  I  feel  sorry  for  him. 

I  slept  like  a  log.  Once  I  fell  asleep,  I  forgot 
about  the  hard  ground,  and  the  smell  of  the  horse- 
blankets,  and  the  fact  that  I'd  lost  my  poor  Dinky- 
Dunk's  team.  When  I  woke  up  it  was  the  first  gray 
of  dawn.  Two  men  were  standing  side  by  side, 
looking  at  me  under  the  wagon.  One  was  Percy, 
and  the  other  was  Dinky-Dunk  himself. 

He'd  got  home  by  three  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
by  hurrying,  for  he  was  nervous  about  me  being 
alone.  But  he  found  the  house  empty,  the  team 
standing  beside  the  corral,  and  me  missing.  Nat 
urally,  it  wasn't  a  very  happy  situation.  Poor 
Dinky-Dunk  hit  the  trail  at  once,  and  had  been 
147 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

riding  all  night  looking  for  his  lost  wife.  Then 
he  made  for  Percy's,  woke  him  up,  and  discovered 
her  placidly  snoring  under  a  wagon-box.  He  didn't 
even  smile  at  this.  He  was  very  tired  and  very 
silent.  I  thought,  for  a  moment,  that  I  saw  dis 
trust  on  Dinky-Dunk's  face,  for  the  first  time. 
But  he  has  said  nothing.  I  hated  to  see  him  go  out 
to  work,  when  we  got  home,  but  he  refused  to  take 
a  nap  at  noon,  as  I  wanted  him  to.  So  to-night, 
when  he  came  in  for  his  supper,  I  had  the  birth 
day  cake  duly  decked  and  the  presents  all  out. 

But  his  enthusiasm  was  forced,  and  all  during  the 
meal  he  showed  a  tendency  to  be  absent-minded.  I 
had  no  explanations  to  make,  so  I  made  none.  But 
I  noticed  that  he  put  on  his  old  slippers.  I  thought 
he  had  done  it  deliberately. 

"You  don't  seem  to  mellow  with  age,"  I  an 
nounced,  with  my  eyebrows  up.  He  flushed  at  that, 
quite  plainly.  Then  he  reached  over  and  took  hold 
of  my  hand.  But  he  did  it  only  with  an  effort,  and 
after  some  tremendous  inward  struggle  which  was 
not  altogether  flattering  to  me. 
148 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

"Please  take  your  hand  away  so  I  can  reach  the 
dish-towel,"  I  told  him.  And  the  hand  went  away 
like  a  shot.  After  I'd  finished  my  work  I  got  out 
my  George  Meredith  and  read  Modern  Love. 
Dinky-Dunk  did  not  come  to  bed  until  late.  I  was 
awake  when  he  came,  but  I  didn't  let  him  know  it. 


149 


Sunday  the  Twenty-ninth 

I  HAVEN'T  felt  much  like  writing  this  last  week. 
I  scarcely  know  why.  I  think  it's  because  Dinky- 
Dunk  is  on  his  dignity.  He's  getting  thin,  by  the 
way.  His  cheek-bones  show  and  his  Adam's  apple 
sticks  out.  He's  worried  about  his  land  payments, 
and  I  tell  him  he'd  be  happier  with  a  half-section. 
But  Dinky-Dunk  \vants  wealth.  And  I  can't  help 
him  much.  I'm  afraid  I'm  an  encumbrance.  And 
the  stars  make  me  lonely,  and  the  prairie  wind  some 
times  gives  me  the  willies!  And  winter  is  coming. 

I'm  afraid  I'm  out  of  my  setting,  as  badly  out 
of  it  as  Percival  Benson  is.  It  wouldn't  be  so  bad, 
I  suppose,  if  I'd  never  seen  such  lovely  corners  of 
the  world,  before  coming  out  here  to  be  a  dot  on 
the  wilderness.  If  I'd  never  had  that  heavenly  sum 
mer  at  Fiesole,  and  those  months  with  you  at  Corfu, 
and  that  winter  in  Rome  with  poor  dear  dead  Ka- 
trinka !  Sometimes  I  think  of  the  nights  we  used  to 
150 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

look  out  over  Paris,  from  the  roof  above  'Tite  Dan- 
eau's  studio.  And  sometimes  I  think  of  the  Pincio, 
with  the  band  playing,  and  the  carriages  flashing, 
and  the  officers  in  uniform,  and  the  milky  white 
statues  among  the  trees,  and  the  golden  mists  of 
the  late  afternoon  over  the  Immortal  City.  And 
I  tell  myself  that  it  was  all  a  dream.  And  then 
I  feel  that  7  am  all  a  dream,  and  the  prairie  is  a 
dream,  and  Paddy  and  Olie  and  Dinky-Dunk  and 
all  this  new  life  is  nothing  more  than  a  dream.  Oh, 
Matilda  Anne,  I've  been  homesick  this  week,  so  un 
happy  and  homesicK  for  something — for  something, 
and  I  don't  even  know  what  it  is .' 


Monday  the  Seventh 

GLOKY  BE!  Winter's  here  with  a  double-edged 
saber  wind  out  of  the  north  and  snow  on  the  ground. 
It  gives  a  zip  to  things.  It  makes  our  snug  little 
shack  seem  as  cozy  as  a  ship's  cabin.  And  I've  got 
a  jumper-sleigh,  and  with  my  coon-skin  coat  and 
gauntlets  and  wedge-cap  I  can  be  as  warm  as  toast 
in  any  wind.  And  there's  so  much  to  do.  And  I'm 
not  going  to  be  a  piker.  This  is  the  land  where 
folks  make  good  or  go  loco.  You've  only  got  your 
self  to  depend  on,  and  yourself  to  blame,  if  things 
go  wrong.  And  I'm  going  to  make  them  go  right. 
There's  no  use  wailing  out  here  in  the  West.  A 
line  or  two  of  Laurence  Hope's  has  been  running' 
all  day  through  my  head : 

"These  are  my  people,  and  this  my  land ; 

I  hear  the  pulse  of  her  secret  soul. 
This  is  the  life  that  I  understand, 

Savage  and  simple,  and  sane  and  whole." 

152 


Friday  the  Eleventh 

DINKY-DUNK  came  home  with  an  Indian  girl  to 
day,  a  young  half-breed  about  sixteen  years  old. 
She's  to  be  both  companion  and  parlor-maid,  for 
Dinky-Dunk  has  to  hurry  off  to  British  Columbia, 
to  try  to  sell  his  timber-rights  there  to  meet  his 
land  payments.  He's  off  to-morrow.  It  makes  me 
feel  wretched,  but  I'm  consuming  my  own  smoke, 
for  I  don't  want  him  to  think  me  an  encumbrance. 
My  Indian  girl  speaks  a  little  English.  She  also 
eats  sugar  by  the  handful,  whenever  she  can  steal 
it.  I  asked  her  what  her  name  was  and  she  told  me 
"Queenie  MacKenzie."  That  name  almost  took  my 
breath  away.  How  that  untutored  Northwest  abo 
rigine  ever  took  unto  herself  this  Broadway  chorus- 
girl  name,  Heaven  only  knows !  But  I  have  my 
suspicions  of  Queenie.  She  has  certain  exploratory 
movements  which  convince  me  she  is  verminous. 
She  sleeps  in  the  annex,  I'm  happy  to  say. 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

At  dinner  to-night  when  I  was  teaching  Dinky- 
Dunk  how  to  make  a  rabbit  out  of  his  table-napkin 
and  a  sea-sick  passenger  out  of  the  last  of  his 
oranges,  he  explained  that  he  might  not  get  back 
in  time  for  Christmas,  and  asked  if  I'd  mind.  I 
knew  his  trip  was  important,  so  I  kept  a  stiff  upper 
lip  and  said  of  course  I  wouldn't  mind.  But  the 
thought  of  a  Christmas  alone  chilled  my  heart.  I 
tried  to  be  jolly,  and  gave  my  repertory  on  the 
mouth-organ,  which  promptly  stopped  all  activities 
on  the  part  of  the  round-eyed  Queenie  MacKenzie. 
But  all  that  foolery  was  as  forced  as  the  frivolity 
of  the  French  Revolution  Conciergerie  where  the 
merry  diners  couldn't  quite  forget  they  were  going- 
to  lose  their  heads  in  the  morning:! 


Sunday  the  Thirteenth 

NOT  ONLY  is  Duncan  gone,  but  Queenie  has  also 
quite  unceremoniously  taken  her  departure.  It 
arose  from  the  fact  that  I  requested  her  to  take  a 
bath.  The  only  disappointed  member  of  the  family 
is  poor  old  Olie,  who  was  actually  making  sheep's 
eyes  at  that  verminous  Vttle  baggage.  Imagination 
falters  at  what  he  might  have  done  with  a  dollar's 
worth  of  brown  sugar.  When  Queenie  went,  I  find, 
my  mouth-organ  went  with  her.  I'd  like  to  ling 
chih  that  Indian  girl ! 


Wednesday  the  Sixteenth 

IT  WAS  a  sparkling  clear  day  to-day,  with  no 
wind,  so  I  rode  over  to  the  old  Titchborne  Ranch 
with  my  little  jumper-sleigh.  There  I  found  Per- 
cival  Benson  in  a  most  pitiable  condition.  He  had 
been  laid  up  with  the  grip.  His  place  was  untidy, 
his  dishes  were  unwashed,  and  his  fuel  was  run 
ning  short.  His  appearance,  in  fact,  rather  fright 
ened  me.  So  I  bundled  him  up  and  got  him  in  the 
jumper  and  brought  him  straight  home  with  me. 
He  had  a  chill  on  the  way,  so  as  soon  as  we  got 
to  Casa  Grande  I  sent  him  to  bed,  gave  him  hot 
whisky,  and  put  my  hot  water  bottle  at  his  feet. 
He  tried  to  accept  the  whole  thing  as  a  joke,  and 
vowed  I  was  jolly  well  cooking  him.  But  to-night 
he  has  a  high  fever  and  I'm  afraid  he's  in  for  a 
serious  siege  of  illness.  I  intend  to  send  Olie  over 
to  get  some  of  his  things  and  have  his  live  stock 
brought  over  with  ours. 

156 


Sunday  the  Twentieth 

PERCY  has  had  three  very  bad  nights,  but  seems 
a  little  better  to-day.  His  lung  is  congested,  and  it 
may  be  pneumonia,  but  I  think  my  mustard-plaster 
saved  the  day.  He  tries  so  hard  to  be  cheerful,  and 
is  so  grateful  for  every  little  thing.  But  I  wish 
Dinky-Dunk  was  here  to  tell  me  what  to  do. 

I  could  never  have  survived  this  last  week  without 
Olie.  He  is  as  watchful  and  ready  as  a  farm- 
collie.  But  I  want  my  Dinky-Dunk !  I  may  have 
spoiled  my  Dinky-Dunk  a  little,  but  it's  only  once 
every  century  or  two  that  God  makes  a  man  like 
him.  I  want  to  be  a  good  wife.  I  want  to  do  my 
share,  and  keep  a  shoulder  to  the  wheel,  if  the 
going's  got  to  be  heavy  for  the  next  year  or  two. 
I  won't  be  the  Dixon  type.  I  won't — I  won't !  My 
Duncan  will  need  me  during  this  next  year,  and  it 
will  be  a  joy  to  help  him.  For  I  love  that  man,  Ma 
tilda  Anne, — I  love  him  so  much  that  it  hurts ! 
157 


Sunday  the  Twenty-seventh 

CHRISTMAS  has  come  and  gone.  It  was  very 
lonely  at  Casa  Grande.  I  prefer  not  writing  about 
it.  Percy  is  improving,  but  is  still  rather  weak.  I 
think  he  had  a  narrow  squeak. 


158 


Wednesday  the  Thirtieth 

MY  PATIENT  is  up  and  about,  looking  like  a  dif 
ferent  man.  He  shows  the  effects  of  my  forced 
feeding,  though  he  declares  I'm  trying  to  make 
him  into  a  Strasburg  goose,  for  the  sake  of  the 
pate  de  foies  gra$  when  I  cut  him  up.  But  he's  de 
cided  to  go  to  Santa  Barbara  for  the  winter:  and 
I  think  he's  wise.  So  this  afternoon  I  togged  out  in 
my  furs,  took  the  jumper,  and  went  kiting  over  to 
the  Titchborne  Ranch.  Oh,  what  a  shack!  What 
disorder,  what  untidiness,  what  spirit-numbing  des 
olation!  I  don't  blame  poor  Percival  Benson  for 
clearing  out  for  California.  I  got  what  things  he 
needed,  however,  and  went  kiting  home  again. 


159 


Thursday  the  Thirty-first 

I  HARDLY  know  how  to  begin.  But  it  must  be 
written  or  I'll  suddenly  go  mad  and  start  to  bite 
the  shack  walls.  Last  night,  after  Percy  had 
helped  me  turn  the  bread-mixer  (for,  whatever  hap 
pens,  we've  at  least  got  to  eat)  I  helped  him  pack. 
Among  other  things,  he  found  a  copy  of  Housman's 
Shropshire  Lad  and  after  running  through  it  an 
nounced  that  he'd  like  to  read  me  two  or  three  little 
things  out  of  it.  So  I  squatted  down  in  front  of  the 
fire,  idly  poking  at  the  red  coals,  and  he  sat  beside 
the  stove  with  his  book,  in  slippers  and  dressing 
gown.  And  there  he  was  solemnly  reading  out  loud 
when  the  door  opened  and  in  walked  Dinky-Dunk. 

I  say  he  walked  in,  but  that  isn't  quite  right.  He 
stood  in  the  open  door,  staring  at  us,  with  an  ex 
pression  that  would  have  done  credit  to  the  Tragic 
Muse.  I  imagine  Enoch  Arden  wore  much  the  same 
look  when  he  piped  the  home  circle  after  that  pro- 
160 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

longed  absence  of  his.  Then  Dinky-Dunk  did  a 
most  unpardonable  thing.  Instead  of  saying 
"Howdy !"  like  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman,  he 
backed  out  of  the  shack  and  slammed  the  door. 
When  I'd  caught  my  breath  I  went  out  through 
that  door  after  him.  It  was  a  bitterly  cold  night, 
but  I  did  not  stop  to  put  anything  on.  I  was  too 
amazed,  too  indignant,  too  swept  off  my  feet  by 
the  absurdity  of  it  all.  I  could  see  Dinky-Dunk  in 
the  clear  starlight,  taking  the  blankets  off  his  team. 
He'd  hurried  to  the  shack,  without  even  unharness 
ing  the  horses.  I  could  hear  the  wheel-tires  whine 
on  the  crisp  snow,  for  the  poor  beasts  were  tired 
and  restless.  I  went  straight  to  the  buckboard  into 
which  Dinky-Dunk  was  climbing.  He  looked  like 
a  cinnamon-bear  in  his  big  shaggy  coat.  And  I 
couldn't  see  his  face.  But  I  remembered  how  it  had 
looked  in  the  doorway.  It  was  the  color  of  a  tan 
shoe.  It  was  too  weather-beaten  and  burnt  with 
the  wind  and  sun-glare  ever  to  turn  white,  or,  I  sup 
pose,  it  would  have  been  the  color  of  paper. 

"Haven't  you,"  I  demanded,  "haven't  you  any 
161 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

explanation  for  acting  like  this?"  He  sat  in  the 
buckboard  seat,  with  the  reins  in  his  hands. 

"I  guess  I've  got  the  first  right  to  that  ques 
tion,"  he  finally  said  in  a  stifled  voice. 

"Then  why  don't  you  ask  it?"  was  my  answer 
to  him.  Again  he  waited  a  moment  before  speak 
ing,  as  though  he  felt  the  need  of  weighing  his 
words. 

"I  don't  need  to — now !"  he  said,  as  he  tightened 
the  reins. 

"Wait,"  I  called  out  to  him.  "There  are  certain 
things  I  want  you  to  know !" 

I  was  not  going  to  make  explanations.  I  would 
not  dignify  his  brute-man  stupidity  by  such  things. 
I  scarcely  know  what  I  intended  to  do.  As  I  looked 
up  at  him  there  in  his  rough  fur  coat,  for  a  moment, 
he  seemed  millions  and  millions  of  miles  away  from 
me.  I  stared  at  him,  trying  to  comprehend  his  utter 
lack  of  comprehension.  I  seemed  to  view  him  across 
the  same  gulf  which  separates  a  meditative  zoo  vis 
itor  from  some  abysmally  hirsute  animal  that  eons 
and  eons  ago  must  have  been  its  cave-fellow  and 
162 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

hearth-mate.  But  now  we  seemed  to  have  nothing 
in  common,  not  even  a  language  with  which  to  link 
up  those  lost  ages.  Yet  from  all  that  mixture  of 
feelings  only  one  survived:  I  didn't  want  my  hus 
band  to  go. 

• 

It  was  the  team,  as  far  as  I  can  remember,  that 
really  decided  the  thing.  They  had  been  restive, 
backing  and  jerking  and  pawing  and  nickering  for 
their  feed-box.  And  suddenly  they  jumped  for 
ward.  But  this  time  they  kept  going.  Whether 
Dinky-Dunk  tried  to  hold  them  back  or  not  I  can't 
say.  But  I  came  back  to  the  shack,  shivering. 
Percy,  thank  Heaven,  was  in  his  room. 

"I  think  I'll  turn  in !"  he  called  out,  quite  casual 
ly,  through  the  partition. 

I  said  "All  right,"  and  sat  down  in  front  of  the 
fire,  trying  to  straighten  things  out.  My  Dinky- 
Dunk  was  gone!  He  had  glared  at  me,  with  hate 
in  his  eyes,  as  he  sat  in  that  buckboard.  It's  all 
over.  He  has  no  faith  in  me,  his  own  wife ! 

I  went  to  bed  and  tried  to  sleep.  But  sleep  was 
out  of  the  question.  The  whole  thing  seemed  SG 
163 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

absurd,  so  unreasonable,  so  unjust.  I  could  feel 
waves  of  anger  sweep  through  my  body  at  the  mere 
thought  of  it.  Then  a  wave  of  something  else,  of 
something  between  anxiety  and  terror,  would  take 
the  place  of  anger.  My  husband  was  gone,  and 
he'd  never  come  back.  I'd  put  all  my  eggs  in  one 
basket,  and  the  basket  had  gone  over,  and  made  a 
saffron-tinted  omelet  of  all  my  life. 

And  that's  the  way  I  watched  the  New  Year  in. 
I  couldn't  even  afford  the  luxury  of  a  little  bawl,  for 
I  was  afraid  Percy  would  hear  me.  It  must  have 
been  almost  morning  when  I  fell  asleep. 

When  I  woke  up  Percival  Benson  was  gone,  bag 
and  baggage.  At  first  I  resented  the  thought  of 
his  going  off  that  way,  without  a  word,  but  on 
thinking  it  over  I  decided  he'd  done  the  right  thing. 
There's  nothing  like  the  hard  cold  light  of  a  winter 
morning  to  bring  you  back  to  hard  cold  facts. 
Olie  had  driven  Percy  in  to  the  station.  So  I  was 
alone  in  the  shack  all  day.  I  did  a  heap  of  thinking 
during  those  long  hours  of  solitude.  And  out  of  all 
that  straw  of  self-examination  I  threshed  just  one 
164 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

little  grain  of  truth.  /  could  never  live  on  the 
prairie  alone.  And  whatever  I  did,  or  wherever  I 
went,  I  could  never  be  happy  without  my  Dinky- 
Dunk.  .  .  . 

I  had  just  finished  supper  to-night,  as  blue  as 
indigo  and  as  spiritless  as  a  wet  hen,  when  I  heard 
the  sound  of  voices.  It  took  me  only  ten  seconds 
to  make  sure  whose  they  were.  Dinky-Dunk  had 
come  back  with  Olie !  I  made  a  high  dive  for  a 
book  from  the  nearest  shelf,  swung  the  armchair 
about  with  a  jerk,  and  sank  luxuriously  into  it, 
with  my  feet  up  on  the  warm  damper  and  my  eyes 
leisurely  and  contentedly  perusing  George  Moore's 
Confessions  of  a  Young  Man  (although  I  hate 
the  libidinous  stuff  like  poison!)  Then  Dinky- 
Dunk  came  in.  I  could  see  him  stare  at  me  a  little 
awkwardly  and  contritely  (what  woman  can't  read 
a  book  and  study  a  man  at  the  same  time?)  and  I 
could  see  that  he  was  waiting  for  an  opening.  But 
I  gave  him  none.  Naturally,  Olie  had  explained 
everything  to  him.  But  I  had  been  humiliated,  my 
pride  had  been  walked  over,  from  end  to  end.  My 
165 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

spirit  had  been  stamped  on — and  I  had  decided  on 
ny  plan  of  action.     I  simply  ignored  Duncan. 

I  read  for  a  while,  then  I  took  a  lamp,  went  to 
fciy  room,  and  deliberately  locked  the  door.  My  one 
regret  was  that  I  couldn't  see  Dinky-Dunk's  face 
when  that  key  turned.  And  now  I  must  stop  writ 
ing,  and  go  to  bed,  for  I  am  dog-tired.  I  know  I'll 
sleep  better  to-night.  It's  nice  to  remember  there's 
a  man  near,  if  he  happens  to  be  the  man  you  care 
a  trifle  about,  even  though  you  have  calmly  turned 
the  door-key  on  him. 


166 


Sunday  the  Third 

2)iNKY-DuNK  has  at  least  the  sensibilities  to  re 
spect  my  privacy  of  life.  He  knows  where  the  dead 
line  is,  and  doesn't  disregard  it.  '  But  it's  terribly 
hard  to  be  tragic  in  a  two-by-four  shack.  You  miss 
the  dignifying  touches.  And  you  haven't  much  lee 
way  for  the  bulky  swings  of  grandeur. 

For  one  whole  day  I  didn't  speak  to  Dinky-Dunk, 
didn't  even  so  much  as  recognize  his  existence.  I 
ate  by  myself,  and  did  my  work — when  the  mon 
ster  was  around — with  all  the  preoccupation  of  a 
sleep-walker.  But  something  happened,  and  I  for 
got  myself.  Before  I  knew  it  I  was  asking  him  a 
question.  He  answered  it,  quite  soberly,  quite  cas 
ually.  If  he  had  grinned,  or  shown  one  jot  of  tri 
umph,  I  would  have  walked  out  of  the  shack  and 
never  spoken  to  him  again.  I  think  he  knew  he 
was  on  terribly  perilous  ground.  He  picked  his 
way  with  care.  He  asked  me  a  question  back,  quite 
16T 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

offhandedly,  and  for  the  time  being  let  the  matter 
rest  there.  '  But  the  breach  was  in  my  walls,  Ma 
tilda  Anne,  and  I  was  quite  defenseless.  We  were 
both  very  impersonal  and  very  polite,  when  he 
came  in  at  supper  time,  though  I  think  I  turned 
a  visible  pink  when  I  sat  down  at  the  table,  for 
our  eyes  met  there,  just  a  moment  and  no  more. 
I  knew  he  was  watching  me,  covertly,  all  the  time. 
And  I  knew  I  was  making  him  pretty  miserable. 
But  I  wasn't  the  least  bit  ashamed  of  it. 

After  supper  he  indifferently  announced  that  he 
had  nothing  to  do  and  might  as  well  help  me  wash 
up.  I  went  to  hand  him  a  dish-towel.  Instead  of 
taking  the  towel  he  took  my  hand,  with  the  very 
profane  ejaculation,  as  he  did  so,  of  "Oh,  hell, 
Gee-Gee,  what's  the  use?" 

Then  before  I  knew  it,  he  had  me  in  his  arms 
(our  butter-dish  was  broken  in  the  collision)  and  I 
was  weak  enough  to  feel  sorry  for  him  and  his  poor 
tragic  pleading  eyes.  Then  I  gave  up.  If  I  was 
silly  enough  to  have  a  little  cry  on  his  shoulder,  I 
168 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

had  the  satisfaction  of  feeling  him  give  a  gulp  or 
two  himself. 

"You're  the  most  wonderful  woman  in  the 
world !"  he  solemnly  told  me,  and  then  in  a  much  less 
solemn  way  he  began  kissing  me  again.  But  the 
barriers  were  down.  And  how  we  talked  that  night ! 
And  how  different  everything  seemed!  And  how 
nice  it  was  to  feel  his  arm  over  my  shoulder  and 
his  quiet  breathing  on  the  nape  of  my  neck  as  I 
fell  asleep.  It  seemed  as  though  Love  were  fanning 
me  with  its  softest  wings.  I'm  happy  again.  But 
I've  been  wondering  if  it's  environment  that  makes 
character,  or  character  that  makes  environment. 
Sometimes  I  think  it's  one  way,  and  sometimes  I 
feel  it's  the  other.  But  I  can't  be  sure  of  my 
answer — yet !  It's  hard  for  a  spoiled  woman  to  re 
member  that  her  life  has  to  be  merged  into  some 
body  else's  life.  I've  been  wondering  if  marriage 
isn't  like  a  two-panel  screen,  which  won't  stand  up  if 
both  its  panels  are  too  much  in  line.  Heaven  knows, 
I  want  harmony!  But  a  woman  likes  to  feel  that 
169 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

instead  of  being  out  of  step  with  her  whole  regi 
ment  of  life  it's  the  regiment  that's  out  of  step 
with  her.  To-night  I  unlaced  Dinky-Dunk's  shoes, 
and  put  on  his  slippers,  and  sat  on  the  floor  be 
tween  his  knees  with  my  head  against  the  steady 
tick-tock  of  his  watch-pocket.  "Dinky-Dunk,"  I 
solemnly  announced,  "that  gink  called  Pope  was  a 
poor  guesser.  The  proper  study  of  man  should 
iave  been  woman!" 


170 


Thursday  the  Seventh 

EVERYTHING  at  Casa  Grande  has  settled  back 
into  the  usual  groove.  There  is  a  great  deal  to  do 
about  the  shack.  The  grimmest  bug-bear  of  do 
mestic  work  is  dish-washing.  A  pile  of  greasy  plates 
is  the  one  thing  that  gets  on  my  nerves.  And  it 
is  a  little  Waterloo  that  must  be  faced  three  times 
every  day,  of  every  week,  of  every  month,  of  every 
year.  And  I  was  never  properly  "broke"  for  do 
mesticity  and  the  dish-pan !  Why  can't  some  genius 
invent  a  self-washing  fry -pan?  My  hair  is  grow 
ing  so  long  that  I  can  now  do  it  up  in  a  sort 
of  half-hearted  French  roll.  It  has  been  quite 
cold,  with  a  wonderful  fall  of  snow.  The  sleighing 
could  not  be  better. 


171 


Saturday  the  Ninth 

DINKY-DUNK'S  Christmas  present  came  to-day, 
over  two  weeks  late.  He  had  never  mentioned  it, 
and  I  had  not  only  held  my  peace,  but  had  given 
up  all  thought  of  getting  a  really-truly  gift  from 
my  lord  and  master. 

They  brought  it  out  from  Buckhorn,  in  the  bob 
sleigh,  all  wrapped  up  in  old  buffalo-robes  and 
blankets  and  tarpaulins.  It's  a  baby-grand  piano, 
and  a  beauty,  and  it  came  all  the  way  from  Winni 
peg.  But  either  the  shipping  or  the  knocking  about 
or  the  extreme  cold  has  put  it  terribly  out  of  tune, 
and  it  can't  be  used  until  the  piano-tuner  travels  a 
couple  of  hundred  miles  out  here  to  put  it  in  shape. 
And  it's  far  too  big  for  the  shack,  even  when  pushed 
right  up  into  the  corner.  But  Dinky-Dunk  says 
that  before  next  winter  there'll  be  a  different  sort 
of  house  on  this  spot  where  Casa  Grande  now 
stands. 

172 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

"And  that's  to  keep  your  soul  alive,  in  the  mean 
time,"  he  announced.  I  scolded  him  for  being  so 
extravagant,  when  he  needed  every  dollar  he  could 
lay  his  hands  on.  But  he  wouldn't  listen  to  me. 
In  fact,  it  only  started  an  outburst. 

"My  God,  Gee-Gee,"  he  cried,  "haven't  you 
given  up  enough  for  me?  Haven't  you  sacrificed 
enough  in  coming  out  here  to  the  end  of  nowhere 
and  leaving  behind  everything  that  made  life  de 
cent?" 

"Why,  Honey  Chile,  didn't  I  get  you?"  I  de 
manded.  But  even  that  didn't  stop  him. 

"Don't  you  suppose  I  ever  think  what  it's  meant 
to  you,  to  a  woman  like  you?  There  are  certain 
things  we  can't  have,  but  there  are  some  things 
we're  going  to  have.  This  next  ten  or  twelve 
months  will  be  hard,  but  after  that  there's  going  to 
be  a  change — if  the  Lord's  with  me,  and  I  have  a 
white  man's  luck !" 

"And  supposing  we  have  bad  luck  ?"  I  asked  him. 
He  was  silent  for  a  moment  or  two. 
173 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

"We  can  always  give  up,  and  go  back  to  the 
city,"  he  finally  said. 

"Give  up !"  I  said  with  a  whoop.  "Give  up?  Not 
on  your  life,  Mister  Dour  Man !  We're  not  going 
to  be  Dixonites !  We're  going  to  win  out !"  And  we 
were  together  in  a  death-clinch,  hugging  the  breath 
out  of  each  other,  when  Olie  came  in  to  ask  if  he 
hadn't  better  get  the  stock  stabled,  as  there  was  bad 
weather  coming. 


174 


Monday  the  Eleventh 

WE  ARE  having  the  first  real  blizzard  of  the  win 
ter.  It  began  yesterday,  as  Olie  intimated,  and  for 
all  the  tail-end  of  the  day  my  Dinky-Dunk  was  on 
the  go,  in  the  bitter  cold,  looking  after  fuel  and 
feed  and  getting  things  ship-shape,  for  all  the 
world  like  a  skipper  who's  read  his  barometer  and 
seen  a  hurricane  coming.  There  had  been  no  wind 
for  a  couple  of  days,  only  dull  and  heavy  skies  with 
a  disturbing  sense  of  quietness.  Even  when  I  heard 
Olie  and  Dinky-Dunk  shouting  outside,  and  shoring 
up  the  shack-walls  with  poles,  I  could  not  quite 
make  out  what  it  meant. 

Then  the  blizzard  came.  It  came  down  out  of 
the  northwest,  like  a  cloudburst.  It  hummed  and 
sang,  and  then  it  whined,  and  then  it  screamed, 
screamed  in  a  high  falsetto  that  made  you  think 
poor  old  Mother  Earth  was  in  her  last  throes !  The 
snow  was  fine  and  hard,  really  minute  particles  of 
175 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ice,  and  not  snow  at  all,  as  we  know  it  in  the  East, 
little  sharp-angled  diamond-points  that  stung  the 
skin  like  fire.  It  came  in  almost  horizontal  lines, 
driving  flat  across  the  unbroken  prairie  and  defy 
ing  anything  made  of  God  or  man  to  stop  it.  Noth 
ing  did  stop  it.  Our  shack  and  the  bunk-house  and 
stables  and  hay-stacks  tore  a  few  pin-feathers  off 
its  breast,  though  ;  and  those  few  feathers  are  drifts 
higher  than  my  head,  heaped  up  against  each  and 
all  of  the  buildings. 

I  scratched  the  frost  off  a  window-pane,  where 
feathery  little  drifts  were  seeping  in  through  the 
sill-cracks,  when  it  first  began.  But  the  wind  blew 
harder  and  harder  and  the  shack  rocked  and  shook 
with  the  tension.  Oh,  such  a  wind !  It  made  a 
whining  and  wailing  noise,  with  each  note  higher, 
and  when  you  felt  that  it  couldn't  possibly  increase, 
that  it  simply  must  ease  off,  or  the  whole  world 
would  go  smash,  why,  that  whining  note  merely 
grew  tenser  and  the  wind  grew  stronger.  How  it 
lashed  things !  HOAV  it  shook  and  flailed  and 
trampled  this  poor  old  earth  of  ours !  Just  before 
176 


supper  Olie  announced  that  he'd  look  after  my 
chicks  for  me.  I  told  him,  quite  casually,  that  I'd 
attend  to  them  myself.  I  usually  strew  a  mixture 
of  wheat  and  oats  on  the  litter  in  the  hen-house 
overnight.  This  had  two  advantages,  one  was 
that  it  didn't  take  me  out  quite  so  early  in  the 
morning,  and  the  other  was  that  the  chicks  them 
selves  started  scratching  around  first  thing  in  the 
morning  and  so  got  exercise  and  kept  themselves 
warmer-bodied  and  in  better  health. 

It  was  not  essential  that  I  should  go  to  the  hen 
house  myself,  but  I  was  possessed  with  a  sudden 
desire  to  face  that  singing  white  tornado.  So  I  put 
on  my  things,  while  Dinky-Dunk  was  at  work  in 
the  stables.  I  put  on  furs  and  leggings  and  gaunt 
lets  and  all,  as  though  I  were  starting  for  a  ninety- 
mile  drive,  and  slipped  out.  Dinky-Dunk  had  tun 
neled  through  the  drift  in  front  of  the  door,  but 
that  tunnel  was  already  beginning  to  fill  again.  I 
plowed  through  it,  and  tried  to  look  about  me.  Ev 
erything  was  a  sort  of  streaked  misty  gray,  an  all- 
enveloping  muffling  leaden  maelstrom  that  hurt 
177 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

your  skin  when  you  lifted  your  head  and  tried  to 
look  it  in  the  face.  Once,  in  a  lull  of  the  wind  when 
the  snow  was  not  so  thick,  I  caught  sight  of  the 
hay-stacks.  That  gave  me  a  line  on  the  hen-house. 
So  I  made  for  it,  on  the  run,  holding  my  head  low 
as  I  went. 

It  was  glorious,  at  first,  it  made  my  lungs  pump 
and  my  blood  race  and  my  legs  tingle.  Then  the 
storm-devils  howled  in  my  eyes  and  the  ice-lashes 
snapped  in  my  face.  Then  the  wind  went  off  on  a 
rampage  again,  and  I  couldn't  see.  I  couldn't  move 
forward.  I  couldn't  even  breathe.  Then  I  got 
frightened. 

I  leaned  there  against  the  wind  calling  for  Dinky- 
Dunk  and  Olie,  whenever  I  could  gasp  breath 
enough  to  make  a  sound.  But  I  might  as  well  have 
been  a  baby  crying  in  mid-ocean  to  a  Kensington 
Gardens  nurse. 

Then  I  knew  I  was  lost.  No  one  could  ever  hear 
me  in  that  roar.  And  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen, 
just  a  driving,  blinding,  stinging  gray  pall  of  fly 
ing  fury  that  nettled  the  naked  skin  like  electric- 
178 


THE    PRAIRIE    WI1E 

massage  and  took  the  breath  out  of  your  buffeted 
body.  There  was  no  land-mark,  no  glimpse  of  any 
building,  nothing  whatever  to  go  by.  And  I  felt 
so  helpless  in  the  face  of  that  wind!  It  seemed  to 
take  the  power  of  locomotion  from  my  legs.  I 
was  not  altogether  amazed  at  the  thought  that  I 
might  die  there,  within  a  hundred  yards  of  my 
own  home,  so  near  those  narrow  walls  within  which 
were  warmth,  and  shelter,  and  quietness.  I  imag 
ined  how  they'd  find  my  body,  deep  under  the  snow, 
some  morning ;  how  Dinky-Dunk  would  search,  per 
haps  for  days.  I  felt  so  sorry  for  him  I  decided 
not  to  give  up,  that  I  wouldn't  be  lost,  that  I 
wouldn't  die  there  like  a  fly  on  a  sheet  of  tangle 
foot! 

I  had  fallen  down  on  my  knees,  with  my  back 
to  the  wind,  and  already  the  snow  had  drifted 
around  me.  I  also  found  my  eye-lashes  frozen 
together,  and  I  lost  several  winkers  in  getting  rid 
of  those  solidified  tears.  But  I  got  to  my  feet 
and  battled  on,  calling  when  I  could.  I  kept  on, 
going  round  and  round  in  a  circle,  I  suppose,  as 
179 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

people  always  do  when  they're  lost  in  a  storm. 
Then  the  wind  grew  worse  again.  I  couldn't  make 
any  headway  against  it.  I  had  to  give  up.  I 
simply  had  to !  I  wasn't  afraid.  I  wasn't  terrified 
at  the  thought  of  what  was  happening  to  me.  I 
was  only  sorry,  with  a  misty  sort  of  sorrow  I  can't 
explain.  And  I  don't  remember  that  I  felt  partic 
ularly  uncomfortable,  except  for  the  fact  I  found 
it  rather  hard  to  breathe. 

It  was  Olie  who  found  me.  He  came  staggering 
through  the  snow  with  extra  fuel  for  the  bunk- 
house,  and  nearly  walked  over  me.  As  we  found 
out  afterward,  I  wasn't  more  than  thirty  steps 
away  from  that  bunk-house  door.  Olie  pulled  me 
up  out  of  the  snow  the  same  as  you'd  pull  a  skein 
of  darning-silk  out  of  a  work-basket.  He  half 
carried  me  to  the  bunk-house,  got  his  bearings, 
and  then  steered  me  for  the  shack.  It  was  a  fight, 
but  we  made  it.  And  Dinky-Dunk  was  still  out 
looking  after  his  stock  and  doesn't  know  how  nearly 
he  lost  his  Lady  Bird.  I've  made  Olie  promise 
not  to  say  a  word  about  it.  But  the  top  of  mjr 
180 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

nose  is  red  and  swollen.  I  think  it  must  have  got 
a  trifle  frost-nipped,  in  the  encounter.  The 
weather  has  cleared  now,  and  the  wind  has  gone 
down.  But  it  is  very  cold,  and  Dinky-Dunk  has 
just  reported  that  it's  already  forty-eight  below 
zero. 


101 


Tuesday  the  Nineteenth 

THE  days  slip  away  and  I  scarcely  know  where 
they  go.  The  weather  is  wonderful.  Clear  and 
cold,  with  such  heaps  of  sunshine  you'd  never 
dream  it  was  zero  weather.  But  you  have  to  be 
careful,  and  always  wear  furs  when  you're  driv 
ing,  or  out  for  any  length  of  time.  Three  hours 
in  this  open  air  is  as  good  as  a  pint  of  Chinkie's 
best  champagne.  It  makes  me  tingle.  We  are 
living  high,  with  several  barrels  of  frozen  game 
— geese,  duck  and  prairie-chicken — and  also  an  old 
tin  trunk  stuffed  full  of  beef-roasts,  cut  the  right 
size.  I  bring  them  in  and  thaw  them  out  over 
night,  as  I  need  them.  The  freezing  makes  them 
very  tender.  But  they  must  be  completely  thawed 
before  they  go  into  the  oven,  or  the  outside  will 
be  overdone  and  the  inside  still  raw.  I  learned  that 
by  experience.  My  appetite  is  disgraceful,  and 
I'm  still  gaining.  Chinkie  could  never  again  say 
182 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  reminded  him  of  one  of  the  lean  kine  in  Pharaoh's 
dream. 

I  have  been  asking  Dinky-Dunk  if  it  isn't  down 
right  cruelty  to  leave  horses  and  cattle  out  on  the 
range  in  weather  like  this.  My  husband  says  not, 
so  long  as  they  have  a  wind-break  in  time  of  storms. 
The  animals  paw  through  the  snow  for  grass  to 
eat,  and  when  they  get  thirsty  they  can  eat  the 
snow  itself,  which,  Dinky-Dunk  solemnly  assures 
me,  almost  never  gives  them  sore  throat !  But  the 
open  prairie,  just  at  this  season,  is  a  most  inhos 
pitable  looking  pasturage,  and  the  unbroken  glare 
of  white  makes  my  eyes  ache.  .  .  .  There's  one 
big  indoor  task  I  finally  have  accomplished,  and 
that  is  tuning  my  piano.  It  made  my  heart  heavy, 
standing  there  useless,  a  gloomy  monument  of 
ironic  grandeur. 

As  a  girl  I  used  to  watch  Katrinka's  long-haired 
Alsatian  putting  her  concert  grand  to  rights,  and 
I  knew  that  my  ear  was  dependable  enough.  So 
the  second  day  after  my  baby  grand's  arrival  I 
«rent  at  it  with  a  monkey-wrench.  But  that  was 
183 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

a  failure.  Then  I  made  a  drawing  of  a  tuning^ 
hammer  and  had  Olie  secretly  convey  it  to  the  Buck- 
horn  blacksmith,  who  in  turn  concocted  a  great 
steel  hollow-headed  monstrosity  which  actually  fits 
over  the  pins  to  which  the  piano  wires  are  strung 
even  though  the  aforesaid  monstrosity  is  heavy 
enough  to  stun  an  ox  with.  But  it  did  the  work, 
although  it  took  about  two  half-days,  and  now 
every  note  is  true.  So  now  I  have  music!  And 
Dinky-Dunk  does  enjoy  my  playing,  these  long 
winter  evenings.  Some  nights  we  let  Olie  come 
in  and  listen  to  the  concert.  He  sits  rapt,  espe 
cially  when  I  play  rag-time,  which  seems  the  one 
thing  that  touches  his  holy  of  holies.  Poor  Olie! 
I  surely  have  a  good  friend  in  that  silent,  faithful, 
uncouth  Swede! 

Dinky-Dunk  himself  is  so  thin  that  it  worries 
me.  But  he  eats  well  and  doesn't  anathematize 
my  cooking.  He's  getting  a  few  gray  hairs,  at 
the  temples.  I  think  they  make  him  look  rather 
distingue.  But  they  worry  my  poor  Dinky-Dunk. 
"Hully  Gee,"  he  said  yesterday,  studying  himself 
184 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

for  the  third  time  in  his  shaving-glass,  "I'm  getting 
old !"  He  laughed  when  I  started  to  whistle  "Be 
lieve  me  if  all  those  endearing  young  charms,  which 
I  gaze  on  so  fondly  to-day,"  but  at  heart  he  was 
really  disturbed  by  the  discovery  of  those  few 
white  hairs.  I've  been  telling  him  that  the  ladies 
won't  love  him  any  more,  and  that  his  cut-up  days 
are  over.  He  says  I'll  have  to  make  up  for  the 
others.  So  I  started  for  him  with  my  Australian 
crawl-stroke.  It  took  me  an  hour  to  get  the  taste 
of  shaving  soap  out  of  my  mouth.  Dinky-Dunk 
says  I'm  so  full  of  life  that  I  sparkle.  All  I  know 
is  that  I'm  happy,  supremely  and  ridiculously 
happy ! 


185 


Sunday  the  Thirty-first 

THE  inevitable  has  happened.  I  don't  know  how 
to  write  about  it!  I  can't  write  about  itl  My 
heart  goes  down  like  a  freight  elevator,  slowly, 
sickeningly,  even  when  I  think  about  it.  Dinky- 
Dunk  came  in  and  saw  me  studying  a  little  rovr 
of  dates  written  on  the  wall-paper  beside  the  bed 
room  window.  I  pretended  to  be  draping  the  cur 
tain.  "What's  the  matter,  Lady  Bird?"  he  de 
manded  when  he  saw  my  face.  I  calmly  told  him 
that  nothing  was  the  matter.  But  he  wouldn't  let 
me  go.  I  wanted  to  be  alone,  to  think  things  out. 
But  he  kept  holding  me  there,  with  my  face  to 
the  light.  I  suppose  I  must  have  been  all  eyes, 
and  probably  shaking  a  little.  And  I  didn't  want 
him  to  suspect.  • 

"Excuse  me  if  I  find  you  unspeakably  annoy 
ing!"  I  said  in  a  voice  that  was  so  desperately 
cold  that  it  even  surprised  my  own  ears.  H« 
186 


dropped  me  as  though  I  had  been  a  hot  potato.  I 
could  see  that  I'd  hurt  him,  and  hurt  him  a  lot. 
My  first  impulse  was  to  run  to  him  with  a  shower 
of  repentant  kisses,  as  one  usually  does,  the  same 
as  one  sprinkles  salt  on  claret  stains.  But  in  him 
I  beheld  the  original  and  entire  cause — and  I  just 
couldn't  do  it.  He  called  me  a  high-spirited  devil 
with  a  hair-trigger  temper.  But  he  left  me  alone 
to  think  things  out. 


187 


Tuesday  the  Ninth 

I'VE  started  to  say  my  prayers  again.  It  rathel 
frightened  Dinky-Dunk,  who  sat  up  in  bed  and 
asked  me  if  I  wasn't  feeling  well.  I  promptly 
assured  him  that  I  was  in  the  best  of  health.  He 
not  only  agreed  with  me,  but  said  I  was  as  plump 
as  a  partridge.  When  I  am  alone,  though,  I  get 
frightened  and  fidgety.  So  I  kneel  down  every 
night  and  morning  now  and  ask  God  for  help  and 
guidance.  I  want  to  be  a  good  woman  and  a  better 
wife.  But  I  shall  never  let  Duncan  know — never! 


188 


Do  you  remember  Aunt  Harriet  who  always  wept 
when  she  read  The  Isles  of  Greece?  She  didn't 
even  know  where  they  were,  and  had  never  been  east 
of  Salem.  But  all  the  Woodberrys  were  like  that. 
Dinky-Dunk  came  in  and  found  me  crying  to-day, 
for  the  second  time  in  one  week.  He  made  such 
valiantly  ponderous  efforts  to  cheer  me  up,  poor 
boy,  and  shook  his  head  and  said  I'd  soon  be  an 
improvement  on  the  Snider  System,  which  is  a  sys 
tem  of  irrigation  by  spraying  overnight  from 
pipes !  My  nerves  don't  seem  so  good  as  they 
were.  The  winter's  so  long.  I'm  already  count 
ing  fche  days  to  spring. 


189 


Thursday  the  Twenty-fifth 

DINKY-DUXK  has  concluded  that  I'm  too  much 
alone ;  he's  been  worrying  over  it.  I  can  tell  that. 
I  try  not  to  be  moody,  but  sometimes  I  simply 
can't  help  it.  Yesterday  afternoon  he  drove  up 
to  Casa  Grande,  proud  as  Punch,  with  a  little  black 
and  white  kitten  in  the  crook  of  his  arm.  He'd 
covered  twenty-eight  miles  of  trail  for  that  kitten ! 
It's  to  be  my  companion.  But  the  kitten's  as  lone 
some  as  I  am,  and  has  been  crying,  and  nearly 
driving  me  crazy. 


190 


Tuesday  the  Second 

THE  weather  has  been  bad,  but-  winter  is  slip 
ping  away.  Dinky-Dunk  has  been  staying  in  from 
his  work,  these  mornings,  helping  me  about  the 
house.  He  is  clumsy  and  slow,  and  has  broken 
two  or  three  of  the  dishes.  But  I  hate  to  say  any 
thing;  his  eyes  get  so  tragic.  He  declares  that 
as  soon  as  the  trails  are  passable  he's  going  to  have 
a  woman  to  help  me,  that  this  sort  of  thing  can't 
go  on  any  longer.  He  imagines  it's  merely  the 
monotony  of  housework  that  is  making  my  nerves 
so  bad. 

Yesterday  morning  I  was  drying  the  dishes  and 
Dinky-Dunk  was  washing.  I  found  the  second 
spoon  with  egg  on  it.  I  don't  know  why  it  was, 
but  that  trivial  streak  of  yellow  along  the  edge 
of  a  spoon  suddenly  seemed  to  enrage  me.  It  be 
came  monumental,  an  emblem  of  vague  incapabil 
ities  which  I  would  have  to  face  until  the  end  of 
191 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

my  days.  I  flung  that  spoon  back  in  the  dish-pan. 
Then  I  turned  on  my  husband  and  called  out  to 
him,  in  a  voice  that  didn't  quite  seem  like  my  own, 
"O  God,  can't  you  wash  'cm  clean?  Can't  you 
wash  'em  clean?"  I  even  think  I  ran  up  and  down 
the  room  and  pretty  well  made  what  Percival  Ben 
son  would  call  "a  bally  ass"  of  myself.  Dinky- 
Dunk  didn't  even  answer  me.  But  he  dried  his 
hands  and  got  his  things  and  went  outdoors,  to 
the  stables,  I  suppose.  His  face  was  as  colorless 
as  it  could  possibly  get.  I  felt  sorry ;  but  it  was 
too  late.  And  my  sniffling  didn't  do  any  good. 
And  it  startled  me,  as  I  sat  thinking  things  over, 
to  realize  that  I'd  lost  my  sense  of  humor. 


192 


Thursday  the  Fourth 

DINKY-DUNK  thinks  I'm  mad.  I'm  quite  sure 
he  does.  He  came  in  at  noon  to-day  and  found 
me  on  the  floor  with  the  kitten.  I'd  tied  a  piece 
of  fur  to  the  end  of  a  string.  Oh,  how  that  kitten 
scrambled  after  that  fur,  round  and  round  in  a 
circle  until  he'd  tumble  over  on  his  own  ears!  I 
was  squeaking  and  weak  with  laughing  when 
Dinky-Dunk  stood  in  the  door.  Poor  boy,  he  takes 
things  so  solemnly !  But  I  know  he  thinks  I'm 
quite  mad.  Perhaps  I  am.  I  cried  myself  to  sleep 
last  night.  And  for  several  days  now  I've  had  a 
longing  for  caviare. 


193 


Wednesday  the  Seventeenth 

SPRING  is  surely  coming.  It  promises  to  be  an 
early  one.  I  feel  better  at  the  thought  of  it,  and 
of  getting  out  again.  But  the  roads  -  are  *  quite 
impassable.  Such  mud!  Such  oceans  of  glue-pot 
dirt!  They  have  a  saying  out  here  that  soil  is 
as  rich  as  it  is  sticky.  If  this  is  true  Dinky-Dunk 
has  a  second  Garden  of  Eden.  This  mud  sticks 
to  everything,  to  feet,  to  clothes,  to  wagon-wheels. 
But  there's  getting  to  be  real  warmth  in  the  sun 
that  shines  through  my  window. 


194. 


Saturday  the  Twenty-seventh 

A  WARM  Chinook  has  licked  up  the  last  of  the 
snow.  Even  Dinky-Dunk  admits  that  spring  is 
coming.  For  three  solid  hours  an  awakened  blue 
bottle  has  been  buzzing  against  the  pane  of  my 
bedroom  window.  I  wonder  if  most  of  us  aren't 
like  that  fly,  mystified  by  the  illusion  of  light  that 
fails  to  lead  to  liberty?  This  morning  I  caught 
sight  of  Dinky-Dunk  in  his  fur  coat,  climbing  into 
the  buckboard.  I  shall  always  hate  to  see  him  in 
that  rig.  It  makes  me  think  of  a  certain  night. 
And  we  hate  to  have  memory  put  a  finger  on  our 
mental  scars.  When  I  was  a  girl  Aunt  Charlotte's 
second  fiend  of  a  husband  locked  me  up  in  that 
lonely  Derby  house  of  theirs  because  I  threw  peb 
bles  at  the  swans.  Then  off  they  drove  to  dinner 
somewhere  and  left  me  a  prisoner  there,  where  I 
sat  listening  to  the  bells  of  All  Saints  as  the  house 
gradually  grew  dark.  And  ever  since  then  bells 
195 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

at   evening   have   made    me    feel   lonely    and   left 
me  unhappy. 

But  the  renaissance  of  the  buckboard  means  that 
spring  is  here  again.  And  for  my  Dinky-Dunk 
that  means  harder  work.  He's  what  they  call  a 
"rustler"  out  here.  He  believes  in  speed.  He 
doesn't  even  wait  until  the  frost  is  out  of  the  ground 
before  he  starts  to  seed — just  puts  a  drill  over  a 
two-inch  batter  of  thawed-out  mud,  he's  so  mad 
about  getting  early  on  the  land.  He  says  he  wants 
early  wheat  or  no  wheat.  But  he  has  to  have 
help,  and  men  are  almost  impossible  to  get.  He 
had  hoped  for  a  gasoline  tractor,  but  it  can't  be 
financed  this  spring,  he  has  confessed  to  me.  And 
I  know,  in  my  secret  heart  of  hearts,  that  the 
tractor  would  have  been  here  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
my  piano! 

There  are  still  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  acres 
of  prairie  sod  to  "break"  for  spring  wheat.  Dinky- 
Dunk  declares  that  he's  going  to  risk  everything 
on  wheat  this  year.  He  says  that  by  working  two 
outfits  of  horses  he  himself  can  sow  forty  acres 
196 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

a  day,  but  that  means  keeping  the  horses  on  the 
trot  part  of  the  time.  He  is  thinking  so  much 
about  his  crop  that  I  accused  him  of  neglecting  me, 
"Is  the  varnish  starting  to  wear  off?"  I  inquired 
with  a  secret  gulp  of  womanish  self-pity.  He 
saved  the  day  by  declaring  I  was  just  as  crazy  and 
just  as  adorable  as  I  ever  was.  Then  he  asked 
me,  rather  sadly,  if  I  was  bored.  "Bored?"  I  said, 
"how  could  I  be  bored  with  all  these  discomforts? 
No  one  is  ever  bored  until  they  are  comfortable!" 
But  the  moment  after  I'd  said  it  I  was  sorry. 


197 


Tuesday  the  Sixth 

SPRING  is  here,  with  a  warm  Chinook  creeping 
in  from  the  Rockies  and  a  sky  of  robin-egg  blue. 
The  gophers  have  come  out  of  their  winter  quarters 
and  are  chattering  and  racing  about.  We  saw  a 
phalanx  of  wild  geese  going  northward,  and  Dinky- 
Dunk  says  he's  seen  any  number  of  ducks.  They 
go  in  drifting  V's,  and  I  love  to  watch  them  melt  in 
the  sky-line.  The  prairie  floor  is  turning  to  the 
loveliest  of  greens,  and  it  is  a  joy  just  to  be  alive. 
I  have  bsen  out  all  afternoon.  The  gophers  aren't 
et  ahead  of  me! 


198 


Monday  the  Twelfth 

WHAT  would  you  say  if  you  saw  Brunhild 
drive  up  to  your  back  door?  What  would  you  do 
if  you  discovered  a  Norse  goddess  placidly  sur 
veying  you  from  a  green  wagon-seat?  How  would 
you  act  if  you  beheld  a  big  blonde  Valkyr  suddenly 
introducing  herself  into  your  little  earthly  affairs? 

Well,  can  you  wonder  that  I  stared,  all  eyes, 
vhen  Dinky-Dunk  brought  home  a  figure  like  this, 
in  the  shape  of  a  Finn  girl  named  Olga  Sarristo? 
Olga  is  to  work  in  the  fields,  and  to  help  me  when 
she  has  time.  But  I'll  never  get  used  to  having 
a  Norse  Legend  standing  at  my  elbow,  for  Olga 
is  the  most  wonderful  creature  I  have  ever  clapped 
eyes  on.  I  say  that  without  doubt,  and  without 
exaggeration.  And  what  made  the  picture  com 
plete,  she  came  driving  a  yoke  of  oxen — for  Dinky- 
Dunk  will  have  need  of  every  horse  and  hauling 
inimal  he  can  lay  his  hands  on.  I  simply  hel(* 
199 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

my  breath  as  I  stared  up  at  her,  high  on  her  wagon- 
seat,  blocked  out  in  silhouette  against  the  pale  sky 
line,  a  Brunhild  with  cowhide  boots  on.  She 
wore  a  pale  blue  petticoat  and  a  Swedish  looking 
black  shawl  with  bright-colored  flowers  worked 
along  the  hem.  She  had  no  hat.  But  she  had 
two  great  ropes  of  pale  gold  hair,  almost  as  thick 
as  my  arm,  and  hanging  almost  as  low  as  her 
knees.  She  looked  colossal  up  on  the  wagon-seat, 
but  when  she  got  down  on  the  ground  she  was 
not  so  immense.  She  is,  however,  a  strapping  big 
woman,  and  I  don't  think  I  ever  saw  such  shoulders ! 
She  is  Olympian,  Titanic!  She  makes  me  think 
of  the  Venus  de  Milo ;  there's  such  a  largeness  and 
calmness  and  smoothness  of  surface  about  her.  I 
suppose  a  Saint-Gaudens  might  say  that  her  mouth 
was  too  big  and  a  Gibson  might  add  that  her  nose 
hadn't  the  narrow  rectitude  of  a  Greek  statue's, 
but  she's  a  beautiful,  a  beautiful — "woman"  was 
the  word  I  was  going  to  write,  but  the  word  "ani 
mal"  just  bunts  and  shoves  itself  in,  like  a  stabled 
cow  insisting  on  its  own  stall.  But  if  you  regard 
200 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

her  as  only  animal,  you  must  at  least  accept  her 
as  a  perfect  one.  Her  mouth  is  large,  but  I  never 
saw  such  red  lips,  full  and  red  and  dewy.  Her 
forehead  is  low  and  square,  but  milky  smooth,  and 
I  know  she  could  crack  a  chicken-bone  between  those 
white  teeth  of  hers.  Even  her  tongue,  I  noticed, 
is  a  watermelon  red.  She  must  be  healthy.  Dinky- 
Dunk  says  she's  a  find,  that  she  can  drive  a  double- 
seeder  as  well  as  any  man  in  the  West,  and  that 
by  taking  her  for  the  season  he  gets  the  use  of 
the  ox-team  as  well.  He  warned  me  not  to  ask 
her  about  her  family,  as  only  a  few  weeks  ago 
her  father  and  younger  brother  were  burned  to 
death  in  their  shack,  a  hundred  miles  or  so  north 
of  us. 


201 


Tuesday  the  Twentieth 

OLGA  has  been  with  us  a  week,  and  she  still  fas 
cinates  me.  She  is  installed  in  the  annex,  and  seems 
calmly  satisfied  with  her  surroundings.  She 
brought  everything  she  owns  tied  up  in  an  oat-sack. 
I  have  given  her  a  few  of  my  things,  for  which 
she  seems  dumbly  grateful.  She  seldom  talks,  and 
never  laughs.  But  I  am  teaching  her  to  say  "yes" 
instead  of  "yaw."  She  studies  me  with  her  limpid 
blue  eyes,  and  if  she  is  silent  she  is  never  sullen. 
She  hasn't  the  heavy  forehead  and  jaw  of  the  Ga- 
lician  women  and  she  hasn't  the  Asiatic  cast  of 
face  that  belongs  to  the  Russian  peasant.  And 
she  has  the  finest  mouthful  of  teeth  I  ever  saw  in 
a  human  head — and  she  never  used  a  toothbrush 
in  her  life !  She  is  only  nineteen,  but  such  a  bosom, 
such  limbs,  such  strength! 

This  is  a  great  deal  of  talk  about  Olga,  I'nt 
>fraid,  but  you  must  remember  that  Olga  is  ar 
202 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

event.  I  expected  Olie  would  be  keeled  over  by 
her  arrival,  but  they  seem  to  regard  each  other 
with  silent  contempt.  I  suppose  that  is  because 
racially  and  physically  they  are  of  the  same  type. 
I'm  anxious  to  see  what  Percival  Benson  thinks  of 
Olga  when  he  gets  back — they  would  be  such  op- 
posites.  Olga  is  working  with  her  ox-team  on  the 
land.  Two  days  ago  I  rode  out  on  Paddy  and 
watched  her.  There  was  something  Homeric  about 
it,  something  Sorolla  would  have  jumped  at.  She 
seemed  so  like  her  oxen.  She  moved  like  them, 
and  her  eyes  were  like  theirs.  She  has  the  same 
strength  and  solemnity  when  she  walks.  She's  so 
primitive  and  natural  and  instinctive  in  her  ac 
tions.  Yesterday,  after  dinner,  she  curled  up  on 
a  pile  of  hay  at  one  end  of  the  corral  and  fell 
asleep  for  a  few  minutes,  flat  in  the  strong  noon 
day  light.  I  saw  Dinky-Dunk  stop  on  his  way 
to  the  stable  and  stand  and  look  down  at  her.  I 
slipped  out  beside  him.  "God,  what  a  woman!" 
he  said  under  his  breath.  A  vague  stab  of  jeal 
ousy  went  through  me  as  I  heard  him  say  that. 
203 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Then  I  looked  at  her  hand,  large,  relaxed,  rough 
ened  with  all  kinds  of  weather  and  calloused  with 
heavy  work.  And  this  time  it  was  an  equally  vague 
stab  of  pity  that  went  through  me. 


204 


Monday  the  Twenty-sixth 

THE  rush  is  on,  and  Dinky-Dunk  is  always  out 
before  six.  If  it's  true,  as  some  one  once  said, 
that  the  pleasures  of  life  depended  on  its  anxieties, 
then  we  ought  to  be  a  hilarious  household.  Every 
one  is  busy,  and  I  do  what  I  can  to  help.  I  don't 
know  why  it  is,  but  I  find  an  odd  comfort  in  the 
thought  of  having  another  woman  near  me,  even 
Olga.  She  also  helps  me  a  great  deal  with  the 
housework.  Those  huge  hands  of  hers  have  a  dex 
terity  you'd  never  dream  of.  She  thinks  the  piano 
a  sort  of  miracle,  and  me  a  second  miracle  for  being 
able  to  play  it.  In  the  evening  she  sits  back  in  a 
corner,  the  darkest  corner  she  can  find,  and  lis 
tens.  She  never  speaks,  never  moves,  never  ex 
presses  one  iota  of  emotion.  But  in  the  gloom  I 
can  often  catch  the  animal-like  glow  of  her  eyes. 
They  seem  almost  phosphorescent.  Dinky-Dunk 
had  a  long  letter  from  Percival  Benson  to-day.  It 
205 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

was  interesting  and  offhandedly  jolly  and  just  the 
right  sort.  And  Percy  says  he'll  be  back  on  the 
Titchborne  place  in  a  few  weeks. 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-eighth 

OLGA  went  through  the  boards  of  her  wagon- 
box  and  got  a  bad  scrape  on  her  leg.  She  showed 
me  the !  extent  of  her  injuries,  without  the  slightest 
hesitation,  and  I  gave  her  first-aid  treatment  with 
my  carbolated  vaseline.  And  still  again  I  had  to 
think  of  the  Venus  de  Milo,  for  it  was  a  knee  like 
a  statue's,  milky  white  and  round  and  smooth,  with 
a  skin  like  a  baby's,  and  so  different  to  her  sun 
burnt  forearms.  It  was  Olympian  more  than  Fifth- 
Avenuey.  It  was  a  leg  that  made  me  think,  not 
of  Rubens,  but  of  Titian,  and  my  thoughts  at 
once  went  out  to  the  right-hand  lady  of  the  "Sacred 
and  Profane  Love,"  in  the  Borghese,  there  was  such 
softness  and  roundness  combined  with  its  strength. 
And  Dinky-Dunk  walked  in  and  stood  staring  at 
it,  himself,  with  never  so  much  as  a  word  of  apol 
ogy.  Olga  looked  up  at  him  without  a  flicker  of 
her  ox-like  eyes.  It  wasn't  until  I  made  an  angry 
207 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

motion  for  her  to  drop  her  skirt  that  she  realized 
any  necessity  for  covering  the  Titian  knee.  But 
again  I  felt  that  odd  pang  of  jealousy  needle 
through  me  as  I  saw  his  face.  At  least  I  suppose 
it  was  jealousy,  the  jealousy  of  an  artful  little 
Mona-Lisa  minx  who  didn't  even  class  in  with  the 
demi-gods.  When  Olga  was  gone,  however,  I  said 
to  Dinky-Dunk:  "Isn't  that  a  limb  for  your  life?" 

He  merely  said:  "We  don't  grow  limbs  up  here, 
Tabby.  They're  legs,  just  plain  legs !" 

"Anything  but  plain!"  I  corrected  him.  Then 
he  acknowledged  that  he'd  seen  those  knees  before. 
He'd  stumbled  on  Olga  and  her  brother  knee-deep 
in  mud  and  cow  manure,  treading  a  mixture  to  plas 
ter  their  shack  with,  the  same  as  the  Doukhobors 
do.  It  left  me  less  envious  of  those  Junoesque 
knees. 


Monday  the  Second 

KEEPING  chickens  is  a  much  more  complicated 
thing  than  the  outsider  imagines.  For  example, 
several  of  my  best  hens,  quite  untouched  by  the 
modern  spirit  of  feminine  unrest,  have  been  devel 
oping  "broodiness"  and  I  have  been  trying  to 
"break  them  up,"  as  the  poulterers  put  it.  But 
they  are  determined  to  set.  This  mothering  instinct 
is  a  fine  enough  thing  in  its  way,  but  it's  been 
spoiling  too  many  good  eggs.  So  I've  been  trying  to 
emancipate  these  ruffled  females.  I  lift  them  off  the 
nest  by  the  tail  feathers,  ten  times  a  day.  I  fling 
cold  water  in  their  solemn  maternal  faces.  I  put 
little  rings  of  barb-wire  under  their  sentimental  old 
bosoms.  But  still  they  set.  And  one,  having  pecked 
me  on  the  wrist  until  the  blood  came,  got  her  ears 
promptly  boxed — in  face  of  the  fact  that  all  poul 
try  keepers  acknowledge  that  kindness  to  a  hen 
improves  her  laying  qualities. 
209 


Thursday  the  Fifth 

CASA  GRANDE  is  a  beehive  of  industry.  Every 
one  has  a  part  to  play.  I  am  no  longer  expected 
to  sit  by  the  fire  and  purr.  At  nights  I  sew. 
Dinky-Dunk  is  so  hard  on  his  clothes !  When  it's 
not  putting  on  patches  it's  sewing  on  buttons. 
Then  we  go  to  bed  at  half-past  nine.  At  half- 
past  nine,  think  of  it!  Little  me,  who  more  than 
once  went  humming  up  Fifth  Avenue  when  morn 
ing  was  showing  gray  over  the  East  River,  and 
often  left  Sherry's  (oh,  those  dear  old  dancing 
days!)  when  the  milk  wagons  were  rumbling 
through  Forty-fourth  Street,  and  once  trium 
phantly  announced,  on  coming  out  of  Dorlon's  and 
studying  the  old  Oyster-Letter  clock,  that  I'd  stuck 
it  out  to  Y  minutes  past  O !  But  it's  no  hardship 
to  get  up  at  five,  these  glorious  mornings.  The 
days  get  longer,  and  the  weather  is  perfect.  And 
the  prairie  looks  as  though  a  vacuum  cleaner  had 
210 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

been  at  work  on  it  overnight.  Positively,  there's 
a  charwoman  who  does  this  old  world  over,  while 
we  sleep!  By  morning  it's  as  bright  as  a  new 
pin.  And  out  here  every  one  is  thinking  of  the 
day  ahead ;  Dinky-Dunk,  of  his  crop ;  Olga,  of 
the  pair  of  sky-blue  corsets  I've  written  to  the 
Winnipeg  mail-order  house  for;  Olie,  of  the  final 
waterproofing  of  the  granaries  so  the  wheat  won't 
get  spoilt  any  more ;  Gee-Gee,  herself,  of — of  some 
thing  which  she's  almost  afraid  to  think  about. 

Dinky-Dunk,  in  his  deviling  moods,  says  I'm 
an  old  married  woman  now,  that  I'm  settled,  that 
I've  eaten  my  pie !  Perhaps  I  have.  I'm  not  im 
aginative,  so  I  must  depend  on  others  for  my  joy 
of  living.  I  know  now  that  I  can  never  create, 
never  really  express  myself  in  any  way  worth  while, 
either  on  paper  or  canvas  or  keyboard.  And  peo 
ple  without  imagination,  I  suppose,  simply  have  to 
drop  back  to  racial  simplicities — which  means  I'll 
have  to  have  a  family,  and  feed  hungry  mouths, 
and  keep  a  home  going.  And  I'll  have  to  get  all 
my  art  at  second-hand,  from  magazines  and  gram- 
211 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ophone  records  and  plaster-of-Paris  casts.  Just 
a  housewife !  And  I  so  wanted  to  be  something 
more,  once!  Yet  I  wonder  if,  after  all,  the  one  is 
so  much  better  than  the  other?  I  wonder?  And 
here  comes  my  Dinky-Dunk,  and  in  three  minutes 
he'll  be  kissing  me  on  the  tip  of  the  chin  and  ask 
ing  me  what  there's  going  to  be  good  for  suppsr! 
And  that  is  better  than  fame!  For  all  afternoon 
chose  twelve  little  lines  of  Dobson's  have  been  run 
ning  through  my  head: 

Fame  is  a  food  that  dead  men  eat — 
I  have  no  stomach  for  such  meat. 
In  little  light  and  narrow  rooms, 
They  eat  it  in  the  silent  tombs, 
With  no  kind  voice  of  comrade  near 
To  bid  the  banquet  be  of  cheer. 

But  Friendship  is  a  noble  thing — 
Of  Friendship  it  is  good  to  sing, 
For  truly  when  a  man  shall  end, 
He  lives  in  memory  of  his  friend 
Who  doth  his  better  part  recall 
And  of  his  faults  make  funeral ! 

But  when  you  put  the  word  "love"  there  in- 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

stead  of  "friendship"  you  make  it  even  better.  .  .  . 
Olga,  by  the  way,  is  not  so  stupid  as  you  might 
imagine.  She's  discovered  something  which  I  didn't 
intend  her  to  find  out.  .  .  .  And  Olie,  also 
by  the  way,  has  solved  the  problem  of  "breaking 
up"  my  setting  hens.  He  has  made  a  swinging 
coop  with  a  wire  netting  bottom,  for  all  the  world 
like  the  hanging  gardens  of  Babylon,  and  into  this 
all  the  ruffled  mothers-to-be  have  been  thrust  and 
the  coop  hung  up  on  the  hen-house  wall.  Open 
wire  is  a  very  uncomfortable  thing  to  set  on,  and 
these  hens  have  at  last  discovered  that  fact.  I 
have  been  out  looking  at  them.  I  never  saw  such 
a  parliament  of  solemn  indignation.  But  their 
pride  has  been  broken,  and  they  are  beginning 
to  show  a  healthier  interest  in  their  meals. 


Tuesday  the  Tenth 

I'VE  been  wondering  if  Dinky-Dunk  is  going  to 
fall  in  love  with  Olga.  Yesterday  I  saw  him  star 
ing  at  her  neck.  She's  the  type  of  woman  that 
would  really  make  the  right  sort  of  wilderness  wife. 
She  seems  an  integral  part  of  the  prairie,  broad- 
bosomed,  fecund,  opulent.  And  she's  so  placid  and 
large  and  soft-spoken  and  easy  to  live  with.  She 
has  none  of  my  moods  and  tantrums. 

Her  corsets  came  to-day,  and  I  showed  her  how 
to  put  them  on.  She  is  incontinently  proud  of 
them,  but  in  my  judgment  they  only  make  her 
ridiculous.  It's  as  foolish  as  putting  a  French 
toque  on  one  of  her  oxen.  The  skin  of  Olga's 
great  shoulders  is  as  smooth  and  creamy  as  a 
baby's.  I  have  been  watching  her  eyes.  They  are 
not  a  dark  blue,  but  in  a  strong  side-light  they 
seem  deep  wells  of  light,  layer  on  layer  of  azure. 
And  she  is  mysterious  to  me,  calmly  and  magnifi- 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

cently  inscrutable.  And  I  once  thought  her  an 
uncouth  animal.  But  she  is  a  great  help.  She 
has  planted  rows  and  rows  of  sweet  peas  all  about 
Casa  Grande  and  is  starting  to  make  a  kitchen 
garden,  which  she's  going  to  fence  off  and  look 
after  with  her  own  hands.  It  will  be  twice  the 
size  of  Olie's.  But  I  do  hope  she  doesn't  ever  grow 
into  something  mysterious  to  my  Dinky-Dunk. 
This  morning  she  said  I  ought  to  work  in  the  gar 
den,  that  the  more  I  kept  on  my  feet  the  better 
it  would  be  for  me  later  on. 

As  for  Dinky-Dunk,  the  poor  boy  is  working 
himself  gaunt.  Yet  tired  as  he  is,  he  tries  to  read 
a  few  pages  of  something  worth  while  every  night. 
Sometimes  we  take  turns  in  reading.  Last  night 
he  handed  me  over  his  volume  of  Spencer  with  a 
pencil  mark  along  one  passage.  This  passage  said : 
"Intellectual  activity  in  women  is  liable  to  be  dim 
inished  after  marriage  by  that  antagonism  between 
mdividuation  and  reproduction  everywhere  opera 
tive  throughout  the  organic  world."  I  don't  know 
why,  but  that  passage  made  me  as  hot  as  a  hornet 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

In  the  background  of  my  brain  I  carried  some 
vague  memory  of  George  Eliot  once  catching  this 
same  philosophizing  Spencer  fishing  with  a  com 
posite  fly,  and,  remarking  on  his  passion  for  gen 
eralizations,  declaring  that  he  even  fished  with  a 
generalization.  So  I  could  afford  to  laugh.  "Spen 
cer's  idea  of  a  tragedy,"  I  told  Dinky-Dunk,  "is 
a  deduction  killed  by  a  fact !"  And  again  I  smiled 
my  Mona-Lisa  smile.  "And  I'm  going  to  be  one 
of  the  facts !"  I  proudly  proclaimed. 

Dinky-Dunk,  after  thinking  this  over,  broke  into 
a  laugh.  "You  know,  Gee-Gee,"  he  solemnly  an 
nounced,  "there  are  times  when  you  seem  almost 
clever !"  But  I  wasn't  clever  in  this  case,  for  it  was 
hours  later  before  I  saw  the  trap  which  Dinky-Dunk 
had  laid  for  me ! 


216 


Monday  the  Sixteenth 

ALL  day  Saturday  Olga  and  Dinky-Dunk  were 
off  in  the  chuck-wagon,  working  too  far  away  to 
come  home  for  dinner.  The  thought  of  them  being 
out  there,  side  by  side,  hung  over  me  like  a  cloud. 
I  remembered  how  he  had  absently  stared  at  the 
white  column  of  her  neck.  And  I  pictured  him 
stopping  in  his  work  and  studying  her  faded  blue 
cotton  waist  pulled  tight  across  the  line  of  that 
opulent  bust.  What  man  wouldn't  be  impressed 
by  such  bodily  magnificence,  such  lavish  and  un 
dulating  youth  and  strength?  And  there's  some 
thing  so  soft  and  diffused  about  those  ox-like  eyes 
of  hers !  You  do  not  think,  then,  of  her  eyes  being 
such  a  pale  blue,  any  more  than  you  could  stop 
to  accuse  summer  moonlight  of  not  being  ruddy. 
And  those  unruffled  blue  eyes  never  seem  to  see 
you ;  they  rather  seem  to  bathe  you  in  a  gaze  as 
soft  and  impersonal  as  moonlight  itself. 
217 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  simply  couldn't  stand  it  any  more.  I  got 
on  Paddy  and  galloped  out  for  my  Dinky-Dunk, 
as  though  it  were  my  sudden  and  solemn  duty 
to  save  him  from  some  imminent  and  awful  catas 
trophe. 

I  stopped  on  the  way,  to  watch  a  couple  of 
prairie-chickens  minuetting  through  the  turns  of 
their  vernal  courtships.  The  pompous  little  beg 
gars  with  puffed-out  wattles  and  neck  ruffs  were 
positively  doing  cancans  and  two-steps  along  the 
prairie  floor.  Love  was  in  the  air,  that  perfect 
spring  afternoon,  even  for  the  animal  world.  So 
instead  of  riding  openly  and  honestly  up  to  Dinky- 
Dunk  and  Olga,  I  kept  under  cover  as  much  as 
I  could  and  stalked  them,  as  though  I  had  been  a 
timber  wolf. 

Then  I  felt  thoroughly  and  unspeakably  ashamed 
of  myself,  for  I  caught  sight  of  Olga  high  on  her 
wagon,  like  a  Valkyr  on  a  cloud,  and  Dinky-Dunlc 
hard  at  work  a  good  two  miles  away. 

He  was  a  little  startled  to  see  me  come  cantering 
flD  OR  Paddy.  I  don't  know  whether  it  was  silly  or 
218 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

not,  but  I  told  him  straight  out  what  had  brought 
me.  He  hugged  me  like  a  bear  and  then  sat  down 
on  the  prairie  and  laughed.  "With  that  cow?" 
he  cried-  And  I'm  sure  no  man  could  ever  call 
the  woman  he  loves  a  cow.  ...  I  believe  Dinky- 
Dunk  suspects  something.  He's  just  asked  me 
to  be  more  careful  about  riding  Paddy.  And  he's 
been  more  solemnly  kind,  lately.  But  I'll  nevei 
tell  him — never — never ! 


Tuesday  the  Twenty-fourth 

PERCY  will  be  back  to-morrow.  It  will  be  a  dif 
ferent  looking  country  to  what  it  was  when  he 
2eft.  I've  been  staring  up  at  a  cobalt  sky,  and 
begin  to  understand  why  people  used  to  think 
Heaven  was  somewhere  up  in  the  midst  of  such 
celestial  blue.  And  on  the  prairie  the  sky  is  your 
first  and  last  friend.  Wasn't  it  Emerson  who  some 
where  said  that  the  firmament  was  the  daily  bread 
for  one's  eyes?  And  oh,  the  lovely,  greening  floor 
of  the  wheat  country  now!  Such  a  soft  yellow- 
green  glory  stretching  so  far  in  every  direction, 
growing  so  much  deeper  day  by  day!  And  the 
sun  and  space  and  clear  light  on  the  sky-line  and 
the  pillars  of  smoke  miles  away  and  the  wonderful, 
mysterious  promise  that  is  hanging  over  this  teem 
ing,  steaming,  shimmering,  abundant  broad  bosom 
of  earth!  It  thrills  me  in  a  way  I  can't  explain. 
By  night  and  day,  before  breakfast  and  after  sup- 
220 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

per,  the  talk  is  of  wheat,  wheat,  wheat,  until  I 
nearly  go  crazy.  I  complained  to  Dinky-Dunk  that 
he  was  dreaming  wheat,  living  wheat,  breathing 
wheat,  that  he  and  all  the  rest  of  the  world  seemed 
mad  about  wheat. 

"And  there's  just  one  other  thing  you  must  re 
member,  Lady  Bird,"  was  his  answer.  "All  the 
rsst  of  the  world  is  eating  wheat.  It  can't  live 
without  wheat.  And  I'd  rather  be  growing  the 
bread  that  feeds  the  hungry  than  getting  rich 
making  cordite  and  Krupp  guns !"  So  he's  risking 
everything  on  this  crop  of  his,  and  is  eternally 
figuring  and  planning  and  getting  ready  for  the 
grande  debacle.  He  says  it  will  be  like  a  battle. 
And  no  general  goes  into  a  battle  without  being 
prepared  for  it.  But  when  we  read  about  the  do 
ings  of  the  outside  world,  it  seems  like  reading 
of  happenings  that  have  taken  place  on  the  planet 
Mars.  We're  our  own  little  world  just  now,  self- 
contained,  rounded-out,  complete. 


221 


Friday  the  Third 

Two  things  of  vast  importance  have  happened. 
Dinky-Dunk  has  packed  up  and  made  off  to  Ed 
monton  to  interview  some  railway  officials,  and 
Percy  is  back.  Dinky-Dunk  is  so  mysteriously 
silent  as  to  the  matter  of  his  trip  that  I'm  afraid 
he  is  worried  about  money  matters.  And  he  asked 
me  if  I'd  mind  keeping  the  household  expenses 
down  as  low  as  I  could,  without  actual  hardship, 
for  the  next  few  months. 

As  for  Percy,  he  seemed  a  little  constrained, 
but  looked  ever  so  much  better.  He  is  quite  sun 
burned,  likes  California  and  says  we  ought  to  have 
a  winter  bungalow  there  (and  Dinky-Dunk  just 
warning  me  to  save  on  the  pantry  pennies !)  He's 
brought  a  fastidious  h'ttle  old  English  woman  back 
with  him  as  a  housekeeper,  a  Mrs.  Watson,  and 
she  looks  both  capable  and  practical.  Notwith 
standing  the  fact  that  she  seems  to  have  stepped 
222 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

right  out  of  Dickens,  and  carries  a  huge  Manx 
cat  about  with  her,  Percy  said  he  thought  they'd 
muddle  along  in  some  way.  Thoughtful  boy  that 
he  was,  he  brought  me  a  portmanteau  packed  full 
of  the  newer  novels  and  magazines,  and  a  two-pound 
jar  of  smoking  tobacco  for  Dinky-Dunk. 


223 


Thursday  the  Ninth 

A  BELASCO  couldn't  have  more  carefully  stage- 
managed  the  first  meeting  between  Percy  and  Olga. 
I  felt  that  she  was  my  discovery,  and  I  wanted  to 
spring  her  on  him  at  the  right  moment,  and  in 
the  right  way.  I  wanted  to  get  the  Valkyr  on  a 
cloud  effect.  So  I  kept  Percy  in  the  house  on 
the  pretext  of  giving  him  a  cup  of  tea,  until  I 
should  hear  the  rumble  of  the  wagon  and  know 
that  Olga  was  swinging  home  with  her  team.  It 
so  happened,  when  I  heard  the  first  faint  far  thun 
der  of  that  homing  wagon,  that  Percy  was  sitting 
in  my  easy  chair,  with  a  cup  of  my  thinnest  china 
in  one  hand  and  a  copy  of  Walter  Pater's  Marlus 
the  Epicurean  in  the  other.  We  had  been  speak- 
ing  of  climate,  and  he  wanted  to  look  up  the  pas 
sage  where  Pater  said,  "one  always  dies  of  the 
cold" — which  I  consider  a  slur  on  the  Northwest! 

I  couldn't  help  realizing,  as  I  sat  staring  at 
224 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Percy,  at  the  thin,  over-sensitive  face,  and  the  high- 
arched,  over-refined  nose,  and  the  narrow,  stoop 
ing,  over-delicate  shoulders,  what  a  direct  opposite 
he  was  to  Olga,  in  every  way.  Instead  of  thin 
china  and  Pater  in  her  hand  at  that  very  moment, 
I  remembered  she'd  probably  have  a  four-tined  fork 
or  a  mud-stained  fence  stretcher. 

I  went  to  the  door  and  looked  out.  At  the 
proper  moment  I  called  Percy.  Olga  was  stand 
ing  up  in  the  wagon-box,  swinging  about  one 
corner  of  the  corral.  She  stood  with  her  shoulders 
well  back,  for  her  weight  was  already  on  the  lines, 
to  pull  the  team  up.  Her  loose  blue  skirt  edge 
was  fluttering  in  the  wind,  but  at  the  front  was 
held  tight  against  her  legs,  like  the  drapery  of  the 
Peace  figure  in  the  Sherman  statue  in  the  Plaza. 
Across  that  Artemis-like  bosom  her  thin  waist  was 
stretched  tight.  She  had  no  hat  on,  and  her  pale 
gold  hair,  which  had  been  braided  and  twisted  up 
into  a  heavy  crown,  had  the  sheen  of  metal  on  it, 
in  the  later  afternoon  sun.  And  in  that  clear 
glow  of  light,  which  so  often  plays  mirage-like 
225 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

tricks  with  vision,  she  loomed  up  like  a  demi-god, 
or  a  she-Mercury  who  ought  to  have  had  little 
bicycle  wheels  attached  to  her  heels. 

Percy  is  never  demonstrative.  But  I  could  see 
that  he  was  more  than  impressed.  He  was  amazed. 

"My  word !"  he  said  very  quietly. 

"What  does  she  make  you  think  of?"  I  de 
manded. 

Percy  put  down  his  teacup. 

"Don't  go  away,"  I  commanded,  "but  tell  me 
what  she  makes  you  think  of."  He  still  stood  star 
ing  at  her  with  puckered  up  eyes. 

"She's  like  band-music  going  by !"  he  proclaimed. 
"No,  she's  more  than  that ;  she's  Wagner  on 
wheels,"  he  finally  said.  "No,  not  that!  A  Norse 
myth  in  dimity!" 

I  told  him  it  wasn't  dimity,  but  he  was  too  in 
terested  in  Olga  to  listen  to  me. 

Half  an  hour  later,  when  she  met  him,  she  was 
very  shy.  She  turned  an  adorable  pink,  and  then 
calmly  rebuttoned  the  two  top  buttons  of  her  waist, 
which  had  been  hanging  loose.  And  I  noticed  that 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Percy  did  precisely  what  I  saw  Dinky-Dunk  once 
doing.  He  sat  staring  absently  yet  studiously  at 
the  milky  white  column  of  Olga's  neck!  And  I 
had  to  speak  to  him  twice,  before  he  even  woke  up 
to  the  fact  that  he  was  being  addressed  by  his 
hostess. 


227 


Wednesday  the  Fifteenth 

DINKY-DUNK  is  back,  and  very  busy  again. 
During  the  day  I  scarcely  get  a  glimpse  of  him, 
except  at  meal-times.  I  have  a  steadily  growing 
sense  of  being  neglected,  but  I  know  how  a  worried 
man  hates  petulance.  The  really  important  thing 
is  that  Percy  is  giving  Olga  lessons  in  reading 
and  writing.  For,  although  a  Finn,  she  is  a  Ca 
nadian  Finn  from  almost  the  shadow  of  the  sub- 
Arctics,  and  has  had  little  chance  for  education. 
But  her  mind  is  not  obtuse. 

Yesterday  I  asked  Olga  what  she  thought  of 
Percival  Benson.  "Ah  lak  heem,"  she  calmly  ad 
mitted  in  her  majestic,  monosyllabic  way.  "He 
is  a  fonny  leetle  man."  And  the  "fonny  leetle 
man"  who  isn't  really  little,  seems  to  like  Olga, 
odd  as  it  may  sound.  They  are  such  opposites, 
such  contradictions!  Percy  says  she's  Homeric. 
He  says  he  never  saw  eyes  that  were  so  limpid,  or 
228 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

such  pools  of  peace  and  calm.  He  insists  on  the 
fact  that  she's  essentially  maternal,  as  maternal  as 
the  soil  over  which  she  walks,  as  Percy  put  it.  I 
told  him  what  Dinky-Dunk  had  once  told  me,  about 
Olga  killing  a  bull.  The  bull  was  a  vicious  brute 
that  had  attacked  her  father  and  knocked  him  down. 
He  was  striking  at  the  fallen  man  with  his  fore- 
paws  when  Olga  heard  his  cries.  She  promptly 
came  for  that  bull  with  a  pitchfork.  And  speak 
ing  of  Homer,  it  must  have  been  a  pretty  epical 
cattle,  for  she  killed  the  bull  and  left  the  fork-tines 
eight  inches  in  his  body  while  she  picked  up  her 
father  and  carried  him  back  to  the  house.  And  I 
won't  even  kill  my  ow,n  hens,  but  have  always  ap 
pointed  Olie  as  the  executioner. 


Friday  the  Seventeenth 

IT  is  funny  to  see  Percy  teaching  Olga.  She 
watches  him  as  though  he  were  a  miracle  man.  Her 
dewy  red  lips  form  the  words  slowly,  and  the  full 
white  throat  utters  them  largely,  laboriously,  in 
struments  on  them,  and  in  some  perhaps  uncouth 
way  makes  them  lovely.  I  sit  with  my  sewing,  lis 
tening.  Sometimes  I  open  the  piano  and  play. 
But  I  feel  out  of  it.  I  seem  to  be  on  the  fringe  of 
things  that  are  momentous  only  to  other  people. 
Last  night,  when  Percy  said  he  thought  he'd  sell 
his  ranch,  Dinky-Dunk  looked  up  from  his  paper- 
littered  desk  and  told  him  to  hang  on  to  that  land 
like  a  leech.  But  he  didn't  explain  why. 


230 


Saturday  the  Nineteenth 

I  CAN'T  even  remember  the  date.  But  I  know 
that  midsummer  is  here,  that  the  men  folks  are  so 
busy  I  have  to  shift  for  myself,  and  that  the  talk 
is  still  of  wheat,  and  how  it's  heading,  and  how 
the  dry  weather  of  the  last  few  weeks  will  affect  th« 
length  of  the  straw.  Dinky-Dunk  is  making  des 
perate  efforts  to  get  men  to  cut  wild-hay.  He's 
bought  the  hay  rights  of  a  large  stretch  between 
some  sloughs  about  seven  miles  east  of  our  place. 
He  says  men  are  scarcer  than  hen's  teeth,  but  has 
the  promise  of  a  couple  of  cutthroats  who  were 
thrown  off  a  freight-train  near  Buckhorn.  Percy 
volunteered  to  help,  and  was  convinced  of  the  fact 
that  he  could  drive  a  mower.  Olie,  who  nurses  a 
vast  contempt  for  Percy,  and,  I  secretly  believe^ 
rather  resents  his  attentions  to  Olga,  put  the  nev 
team  of  colts  on  the  mower.  They  promptly  ran 
Jiway  with  Percy,  who  came  within  an  ace  of  being 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

thrown  in  front  of  the  mower-knife,  which  would 
have  chopped  him  up  into  very  unscholarly  mince 
meat.  Olga  got  on  a  horse,  bareback,  and  rounded 
up  the  colts.  Then  she  cooed  about  poor  bruised 
Percy  and  tried  to  coax  him  to  come  to  the  house. 
But  Percy  said  he  was  going  to  drive  that  team, 
even  if  he  had  to  be  strapped  to  the  mower-seat. 
And,  oddly  enough,  he  did  "gat  them  beat,"  as  Olga 
expressed  it,  but  it  tired  him  out  and  wilted  his 
collar  and  the  sweat  was  running  down  his  face 
when  he  came  in  at  noon.  Olga  is  very  proud  of 
him.  But  she  announced  that  she'd  drive  that 
mower  herself,  and  sailed  into  Olie  for  giving  a 
tenderfoot  a  team  like  that  to  drive.  It  was  her 
first  outburst.  I  couldn't  understand  a  word  she 
said,  but  I  know  that  she  was  magnificent.  She 
looked  like  a  statue  of  Justice  that  had  suddenly 
jumped  off  its  pedestal  and  was  doing  its  best  to 
put  a  Daniel  Webster  out  cf  business ! 


232 


Friday  the  Twenty-eighth 

THE  weather  is  still  very  dry.  But  Dinky-Dunk 
feels  sure  it  will  not  affect  his  crop.  He  says  the 
filaments  of  a  wheat-plant  will  go  almost  two  feet 
deep  in  search  for  moisture.  Yesterday  Percy  ap 
peared  in  a  flannel  shirt,  and  without  his  glasses. 
I  think  he  is  secretly  practising  calisthenics.  He 
said  he  was  going  to  cut  out  this  afternoon  tea,  be 
cause  it  doesn't  seem  to  fit  in  with  prairie  life.  I 
fancy  I  see  the  re-barbarianizing  influence  of  Olga 
at  work  on  Percival  Benson  Woodhouse.  Either 
Dinky-Dunk  or  Olie,  I  find,  has  hidden  my  saddle ' 


233 


Saturday  the  Twenty-ninth 

TO-DAY  lias  been  one  of  the  hottest  days  of  the 
year.  It  may  be  good  for  the  wheat,  but  I  can't 
say  that  it  seems  good  for  me.  All  day  long  I've 
been  fretting  for  far-away  things,  for  foolish  and! 
impossible  things.  I  tried  reading  Keats,  but  that 
only  made  me  worse  than  ever.  I've  been  longing 
for  a  glimpse  of  the  Luxembourg  Gardens  in 
spring,  with  all  the  horse-chestnuts  in  bloom.  I've 
been  wondering  how  lovely  it  would  be  to  drift  into 
the  Blue  Grotto  at  Capri  and  see  the  azure  sea- 
water  drip  from  the  trailing  boat-oars.  I've  been 
burning  with  a  hunger  to  see  a  New  England  or 
chard  in  the  slanting  afternoon  sunlight  of  an  early 
June  afternoon.  The  hot  white  light  of  this  open 
country  makes  my  eyes  ache  and  seems  to  dry  my 
soul  up.  I  can't  help  thinking  of  cool  green  shad 
ows,  and  musky  little  valleys  of  gloom  with  a  brook 
purling  over  mossy  stones.  I  long  for  the  solera? 
234 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

greenery  of  great  elms,  aisles  and  aisles  of  cathe 
dral-like  gloom  and  leaf-filtered  sunlight.  I'd  love 
to  hear  an  English  cuckoo  again,  and  feel  the  soft 
mild  sea-air  that  blows  up  through  Louis's  dear 
little  Devonshire  garden.  But  what's  the  use ! 

I  went  to  the  piano  and  pounded  out  Kennst  Du 
Das  Land  with  all  my  soul,  and  I  imagine  it  did 
me  good.  It  at  least  bombarded  the  silence  out  of 
Casa  Grande.  The  noise  of  life  is  so  far  away 
from  you  on  the  prairie!  It  is  not  utterly  silent, 
just  that  dream j  and  disembodied  sigh  of  wind  and 
grass  against  which  a  human  call  targets  like  a 
leaden  bullet  against  metal.  It  is  almost  worse  than 
silence. 


235 


Sunday  the  Thirtieth 

MY  mood  is  over.  Early,  early  this  morning  I 
slipped  out  of  bed  and  watched  day  break.  I  saw 
the  first  faint  orange  rim  along  the  limitless  sky 
line,  and  then  the  pearly  pink  above  it,  and  all  the 
sweet  dimness  and  softness  and  mystery  of  God's 
hand  pulling  the  curtains  of  morning  apart.  And 
then  the  rioting  orchestras  of  color  struck  up,  and 
I  leaned  out  of  the  window  bathed  in  glory  as  the 
golden  disk  of  the  sun  showed  over  the  dewy  prairie- 
edge.  Oh,  the  grandeur  of  it !  And  oh,  the  God- 
given  freshness  of  that  pellucid  air!  I  love  mt 
land !  I  love  it ! 


23(1 


Tuesday  the  First 

I  HAVE  married  a  man!  My  Dinky-Dunk  is  not 
a  softy.  I  had  that  proved  to  me  yesterday,  when 
I  put  Paddy  in  the  buckboard  and  drove  out  to 
where  the  men  were  working  in  the  hay.  I  was  tak 
ing  their  dinner  out  to  them,  neatly  packed  in  the 
chuck-box.  One  of  the  new  men,  who'd  been  hired 
for  the  rush,  had  been  overworking  his  team.  The 
brute  had  been  prodding  them  with  a  pitchfork,  in 
stead  of  using  a  whip.  Dinky-Dunk  saw  the  marks, 
and  noticed  one  of  the  horses  bleeding.  But  he 
didn't  interfere  until  he  caught  the  man  in  the  act 
of  jabbing  the  tines  into  Maid  Marian's  flank. 
Then  he  jumped  for  him,  just  as  I  drove  up.  He 
cursed  that  man,  cursed  and  damned  him  most 
dreadfully  and  pulled  him  down  off  the  hay-rack. 
Then  they  fought. 

They  fought  like  two  wildcats.  Dinky-Dunk's 
nose  bled  and  his  lip  was  cut.  But  he  knocked  the 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

other  man  flat,  and  when  he  tried  to  get  up  he 
knocked  him  again.  It  seemed  cruel ;  it  was  revolt 
ing.  But  something  in  me  rejoiced  and  exulted  as 
I  saw  that  hulk  of  an  animal  thresh  and  stagger 
about  the  hay-stubble.  I  tried  to  wipe  the  blood 
away  from  Dinky-Dunk's  nose.  But  he  pushed  me 
back  and  said  this  was  no  place  for  a  woman.  I 
had  no  place  in  his  universe,  at  that  particular 
time.  But  Dinky-Dunk  can  fight,  if  he  has  to. 
He's  sa  magerful  a  mon !  He's  afraid  of  nothing. 
But  that  was  nearly  a  costly  victory.  Both  the 
new  men  of  course  threw  up  their  jobs,  then  and 
there.  Dinky-Dunk  paid  them  off,  on  the  spot, 
and  they  started  off  across  the  open  prairie,  with 
out  even  waiting  for  their  meal.  Dinky-Dunk,  as 
we  sat  down  on  the  dry  grass  and  ate  together,  said 
it  was  a  good  riddance,  and  he  was  just  saying  I 
could  only  have  the  left-hand  side  of  his  mouth  to 
kiss  for  the  next  week  when  he  suddenly  dropped 
his  piece  of  custard-pie,  stood  up  and  stared  toward 
the  east.  I  did  the  same,  wondering  what  had  hap 
pened. 

238 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  could  see  a  long  thin  slanting  column  of  smoke 
driving  across  the  hot  noonday  air.  Then  my  heart 
stopped  beating.  It  was  the  prairie  on  fire. 

I  had  heard  a  great  deal  about  fire-guards  and 
fire-guarding,  three  rows  about  crops  and  ten  about 
buildings ;  and  I  knew  that  Olie  hadn't  yet  finished 
turning  all  those  essential  furrows.  And  if  that 
column  of  smoke,  which  was  swinging  up  through 
the  silvery  haze  where  the  indigo  vault  of  heaven 
melted  into  the  dusty  whiteness  of  the  parched 
grasslands,  had  come  from  the  mouth  of  a  siege- 
gun  which  was  cannonading  us  where  we  stood,  it 
couldn't  have  more  completely  chilled  my  blood. 
For  I  knew  that  east  wind  would  carry  the  line  of 
fire  crackling  across  the  prairie  floor  to  Dinky- 
Dunk's  wheat,  to  the  stables  and  out-buildings,  to 
Casa  Grande  itself,  and  all  our  scheming  and  plan 
ning  and  toiling  and  moiling  would  go  up  in  one 
yellow  puff  of  smoke.  And  once  under  way,  noth 
ing  could  stop  that  widening  river  of  flame. 

It  was  Dinky-Dunk  who  j  umped  to  life  as  though 
he  had  indeed  been  cannonaded.  In  one  bound  he 
239 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

was  at  the  blackboard  and  vas  snatching  out  the 
horse-blanket  that  lay  folded  up  under  the  seat. 
Then  he  unsnapped  the  reins  from  Paddy's  bridle, 
snapping  them  on  the  blanket,  one  to  the  buckle 
and  the  other  to  the  strap-end.  In  another  minute 
he  had  the  hobble  off  Paddy  and  had  swung  me  up 
on  that  astonished  pinto's  back.  The  next  minute 
he  himself  was  on  Maid  Marian,  poking  one  end  of 
the  long  rein  into  my  hand  and  telling  me  to  keep 
up  with  him. 

We  rode  like  mad.  I  scarcely  understood  what 
it  meant,  at  the  time,  but  I  at  least  kept  up  with 
him.  We  went  floundering  through  one  end  of  a 
slough  until  the  blanket  was  wet  and  heavy  and  I 
could  hardly  hold  it.  But  I  hung  on  for  dear  life. 
Then  we  swung  off  across  the  dry  grass  toward  that 
advancing  semicircle  of  fire,  as  far  apart  as  the 
taut  reins  would  let  us  ride.  Dinky-Dunk  took  the 
windward  side.  Then  on  we  rushed,  along  that 
wavering  frontier  of  flame,  neck  to  neck,  dragging 
the  wet  blanket  along  its  orange-tinted  crest,  flat 
tening  it  down  and  wiping  it  out  as  we  went.  We 
240 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

made  the  full  circle,  panting;  saw  where  the  flames 
had  broken  out  again,  and  swung  back  with  our 
dragging  blanket.  But  when  one  side  was  con 
quered  another  side  would  revive,  and  off  we'd  have 
to  go  again,  until  my  arm  felt  as  though  it  were 
going  to  be  pulled  out  of  its  socket. 

But  we  won  that  fight,  in  the  end.  I  slipped 
down  off  Paddy's  back  and  lay  full  length  on  the 
sod,  weak,  shaking,  wondering  why  the  solid  ground 
was  rocking  slowly  from  side  to  side  like  a  boat. 
But  Dinky-Dunk  didn't  even  observe  me.  He  was 
fighting  out  the  last  patch  of  fire,  on  foot. 

When  he  came  over  to  where  I  was  waiting  for 
him  he  was  as  sooty  and  black  as  a  boiler-maker. 
He  dropped  down  beside  me,  breathing  hard.  We 
sat  there  holding  each  other's  hand,  for  several 
minutes,  in  utter  silence.  Then  he  said,  rather 
thickly:  "Are  you  all  right?"  And  I  told  him 
that  of  course  I  was  all  right.  Then  he  said,  with 
out  looking  at  me,  "I  forgot !"  Then  he  got  Paddy 
and  patched  up  the  harness  and  took  me  home  in 
the  buckboard. 


But  all  the  rest  of  the  day  he  hung  about  the 
shack,  as  solemn  as  an  owl.  And  once  in  the  night  he 
got  up  and  lighted  the  lamp  and  came  over  and 
studied  my  face.  I  blinked  up  at  him  sleepily,  for  I 
was  dog-tired  and  had  been  dreaming  that  we  were 
back  in  Paris  at  the  Bal  des  Quatz  Arts  and  were 
about  to  finish  up  with  an  early  breakfast  at  the 
Madrid.  He  looked  so  funny  with  his  rumpled  up 
hair  and  his  faded  pajamas  that  I  couldn't  help 
laughing  a  little  as  he  blew  out  the  light  and  got 
back  into  bed. 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  said,  as  I  turned  over  my  pil 
low  and  got  comfy  again,  "wouldn't  it  have  been 
hell  if  all  our  wheat  had  been  burned  up?"  I  for 
get  what  Duncan  said,  for  in  two  minutes  I  was 
asleep  again. 


Monday  the  tfevenm 

THE  dry  spell  has  been  broken,  and  broken  with  a 
vengeance.  One  gets  pretty  well  used  to  high  winds, 
in  the  West.  There  used  to  be  days  at  a  time 
when  that  unending  high  wind  would  make  me  think 
something  was  going  to  happen,  filling  me  with  a 
vague  sense  of  impending  calamity  and  making  me 
imagine  a  big  storm  was  going  to  blow  up  and  wipe 
Casa  Grande  and  its  little  coterie  off  the  map.  But 
we've  had  a  real  wind-storm,  this  time,  with  rain 
and  hail.  Dinky-Dunk's  wheat  looks  sadly  draggled 
out  and  beaten  down,  but  he  says  there  wasn't 
enough  hail  to  hurt  anything;  that  the  straw  will 
straighten  up  again,  and  that  this  downpour  was 
just  what  he  wanted.  Early  in  the  afternoon,  on 
looking  out  the  shack  door,  I  saw  a  tangle  of  clouds 
on  the  sky-line.  They  seemed  twisted  up  like  a 
skein  of  wool  a  kitten  had  been  playing  with.  Then 
they  seemed  to  marshal  themselves  into  one  solid 
243 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

line  and  sweep  up  over  the  sky,  getting  blacker  and 
blacker  as  they  came.  Olga  ran  in  with  her  yellow 
hair  flying,  slamming  and  bolting  the  stable- 
doors,  locking  the  chicken-coop,  and  calling  out  for 
me  to  get  my  clothes  off  the  line  or  they'd  be  blown 
to  pieces.  Even  then  I  could  feel  the  wind.  It 
whipped  my  own  hair  loose,  and  flattened  my  skirt 
against  my  body,  and  I  had  to  lean  forward  to 
make  any  advance  against  it. 

By  this  time  the  black  army  of  the  heavens  had 
rolled  up  overhead  and  a  few  big  frog-like  drops 
of  rain  began  to  fall,  throwing  up  little  clouds  of 
dust,  as  a  rifle  bullet  might.  I  trundled  out  a 
couple  of  tubs,  in  the  hope  of  catching  a  little  soft 
water.  It  wasn't  until  later  that  I  realized  the 
meaning  of  Olga's  mild  stare  of  reproof.  For  the 
next  moment  the  downpour  came,  and  with  it  the 
wind.  And  such  wind!  There  had  been  nothing 
to  stop  its  sweep,  of  course,  for  hundreds  and  hun 
dreds  of  miles,  and  it  hit  us  the  same  as  a  hurricane 
at  sea  hits  a  liner.  The  shack  shook  with  the  force 
of  it.  My  two  washtubs  went  bounding  and  careen- 
244 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

jhg  off  across  the  landscape,  the  chicken-coop  went 
over  like  a  nine-pin,  and  the  air  was  filled  with  bits 
of  flying  timber.  Olga's  wagon,  with  the  hay-rack 
on  top  of  it,  moved  solemnly  and  ponderously  across 
the  barnyard  and  crashed  into  the  corral,  propelled 
by  no  power  but  that  of  the  wind.  My  sweet-pea 
hedges  were  torn  from  their  wires,  and  an  armful 
of  hay  came  smack  against  the  shack-window  and 
was  held  there  by  the  wind,  darkening  the  room 
more  than  ever. 

Then  the  storm  blew  itself  out,  though  it  poured 
for  two  or  three  hours  afterward.  And  all  the 
while,  although  I  exulted  in  that  play  of  elemental 
force,  I  was  worrying  about  my  Dinky-Dunk,  who 
was  away  for  the  day,  doing  what  he  could  to  ar 
range  for  some  harvest  hands,  when  the  time  for 
cutting  came.  For  the  wheat,  it  seems,  ripens  all  at 
once,  and  then  the  grand  rush  begins.  If  it  isn't 
cut  the  moment  it's  ripe,  the  grain  shells  out,  and 
that  means  loss.  Olga  has  been  saying  that  the 
wheat  on  the  Cummins  section  will  easily  run  forty 
aushels  to  the  acre  and  over.  It  will  also  grack 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

high,  whatever  that  means.  There  are  six  hundred 
and  forty  acres  of  it  in  that  section,  and  I've  just 
figured  out  that  this  means  a  little  over  twenty-five 
thousand  bushels  of  grain.  Our  other  piece  on  the 
home  ranch  is  a  larger  tract,  but  a  little  lighter  in 
crop.  That  wheat  is  just  beginning  to  turn  from 
green  to  the  palest  of  yellow.  And  it  has  a  good 
show,  Olga  says,  if  frost  will  only  keep  off  and  no 
hail  comes.  Our  one  occupation,  for  the  next  few 
weeks,  will  be  watching  the  weather. 


Sunday  the  Thirteenth 

PERCY  and  Mrs.  Watson  drove  over  to  see  how 
we'd  all  weathered  the  storm.  They  found  the 
chicken-coop  once  more  right  side  up,  and  every 
thing  ship-shape.  Percy  promptly  asked  where 
Olga  was.  I  pointed  her  out  to  him,  breast-high  in 
the  growing  wheat.  She  looked  like  Ceres,  in  her 
big,  new,  loose-fitting  blue  waist,  with  the  noonday 
sun  on  her  yellow-gold  head  and  her  mild  rumina 
tive  eyes  with  their  misted  sky-line  effect.  She  al 
ways  seems  to  fit  into  the  landscape  here.  I  suppose 
it's  because  she's  a  born  daughter  of  the  soil.  And 
a  sea  of  wheat  makes  a  perfect  frame  for  that  mas 
sive,  benignant  figure  of  hers. 

I  looked  at  Percy,  at  thin-nosed,  unpracticai 
Percy,  with  all  his  finicky  sensibilities,  with  his  high 
fastidious  reticences,  with  his  effete,  inbred  meager- 
ness  of  bone  and  sinew,  with  his  distinguished  pride 
»f  distinguished  race  rather  running  to  seed. 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  stood  marveling  at  the  wisdom  of  old  Mother  Na 
ture,  who  was  so  plainly  propelling  him  toward  this 
revitalizing,  revivifying,  reanimalizing,  redeeming 
type  which  his  pale  austerities  of  spirit  could  never 
quite  neutralize.  Even  Dinky-Dunk  has  noticed 
what  is  taking  place.  He  saw  them  standing  side 
by  side  in  the  grain.  When  he  came  in  he  pointed 
them  out  to  me,  and  merely  said,  "Hermann  und 
Dorothea!"  But  I  remembered  my  Goethe  well 
enough  to  understand. 


348 


Monday  the  Twenty -eighth 

I  WOKE  Dinky-Dunk  up  last  night  crying  besido 
him  in  bed.  I  just  got  to  thinking  about  things 
again,  how  far  away  we  were  from  everything,  how 
hard  it  would  be  to  get  help  if  we  needed  it,  and 
how  much  I'd  give  if  I  only  had  you,  Matilda  Anne, 
for  the  next  few  weeks.  ...  I  got  up  and  went 
to  the  window  and  looked  out.  The  moon  was  big 
and  yellow,  like  a  cheese.  And  the  midnight  prairie 
itself  seemed  so  big  and  wide  and  lonely,  and  I 
seemed  such  a  tiny  speck  on  its  face,  so  far  away 
from  every  one,  from  God  himself,  that  the  courage 
went  out  of  my  body  like  the  air  out  of  a  tire. 
Dinky-Dunk  was  right;  it  is  life  that  is  taming 
me. 

I  stood  at  the  window  praying,  and  then  1 
slipped  back  into  bed.  Dinky-Dunk  works  so  hard 
and  gets  so  tired  that  it  would  take  a  Chinese  devil- 
to  waken  him,  once  he's  asleep.  He  did  nof 
449 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

stir  when  I  crept  back  into  bed.  And  that,  as  I  lay 
there  wide  awake,  made  me  feel  that  even  my  own 
husband  had  betrayed  me.  And  I  bawled.  I  must 
have  shaken  the  bed,  for  Dinky-Dunk  finally  did 
wake  up.  I  couldn't  tell  him  what  was  the  matter. 
I  blubbered  out  that  I  only  wanted  him  to  hold  me. 
He  took  me  in  his  arms,  and  kissed  my  wet  eyelids, 
hugging  me  up  close  to  him,  until  I  got  quieter. 
Then  I  fell  asleep.  But  poor  Dinky-Dunk  was 
awake  when  I  opened  my  eyes  about  four,  and  had 
been  that  way  for  hours.  He  was  afraid  of  dis 
turbing  me  by  taking  his  arm  from  under  my  head. 
To-day  he  looks  tired  and  dark  around  the  eyes. 
But  he  was  up  and  off  early.  There  is  so  much  to 
be  done  these  days !  He  is  putting  up  a  grub-tent 
and  a  rough  sleeping-shack  for  the  harvest  "hands," 
so  that  I  won't  be  bothered  with  a  lot  of  rough  men 
about  the  house  here.  I'm  afraid  I'm  an  encum 
brance,  when  I  should  be  helping.  But  they  seem 
*o  be  taking  everything  out  of  my  hands. 


Saturday  the  Second 

I  LOVE  to  watch  the  wheat,  now  that  it's  really 
turning.  It  waves  like  a  sea  and  stretches  off  into 
the  distance  as  far  as  the  eye  can  follow  it.  It's  as 
high  as  my  waist,  and  sometimes  it  moves  up  and 
down  like  a  slowly  breathing  breast.  When  the  sun 
is  low  it  turns  a  pure  Roman  gold,  and  makes  my 
eyes  ache.  But  I  love  it.  It  strikes  me  as  being 
glorious,  and  at  the  same  time  pathetic — I  scarcely 
know  why.  I  can't  analyze  my  feelings.  But  the 
prairie  brings  a  great  peace  to  my  soul.  It  is  so 
rich,  so  maternal,  so  generous.  It  seems  to  brood 
under  a  passion  to  give,  to  yield  up,  to  surrender 
all  that  is  asked  of  it.  And  it  is  so  tranquil.  It 
seems  like  a  bosom  breathed  on  by  the  breath  of 
God. 


Wednesday  the  Sixth 

IT  is  nearly  a  year,  now,  since  I  first  came  36 
Casa  Grande.  I  can  scarcely  believe  it.  The  nights 
are  getting  very  cool  again  and  any  time  now  there 
might  be  a  heavy  frost.  If  it  should  freeze  this 
next  week  or  two  I  think  my  Dinky-Dunk  would 
just  curl  up  and  die.  Poor  boy,  he's  working  so 
hard !  I  pray  for  that  crop  every  night.  I  worry 
about  it.  Last  night  I  dreamt  it  was  burnt  up  in 
a  prairie-fire  and  woke  up  screaming  for  wet  blan 
kets.  Dinky-Dunk  had  to  hold  me  until  I  got  quiet 
again.  I  asked  him  if  he  loved  me,  now  that  I  was 
getting  old  and  ugly.  He  said  I  was  the  most  beau 
tiful  thing  God  ever  made  and  that  he  loved  me  an 
a  deeper  and  nobler  way  than  he  did  a  year  ago. 
Then  I  asked  him  if  he'd  ever  get  married  again, 
if  I  should  die.  He  called  me  silly  and  said  I  was 
going  to  live  to  be  eighty,  and  that  a  gasoline-trac 
tor  couldn't  kill  me.  But  he  promised  I'd  be  •&* 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

only  one,  whatever  happened.  And  I  believe  him. 
I  know  Dinky-Dunk  would  go  in  black  for  a  solid 
year,  if  I  should  die,  and  he'd  never,  never  marry 
Again,  for  he's  the  sort  of  Old  Sobersides  who  can 
only  love  one  woman  in  one  lifetime.  And  I'm  the 
woman,  glory  be ! 


253 


Tuesday  the  Twelfth 

HARVEST  time  is  here.  The  stage  is  cleared,  and 
the  last  and  great  act  of  the  drama  now  begins. 
It's  a  drama  with  a  stage  a  thousand  miles  wide.  I 
can  hear  through  the  open  windows  the  rattle  of  the 
self-binders.  Olga  is  driving  one,  like  a  tawny 
Boadicea  up  on  her  chariot.  She  said  she  never  saw 
such  heads  of  wheat.  This  is  the  first  day's  cutting, 
but  those  flapping  canvas  belts  and  those  tireless 
arms  of  wood  and  iron  won't  have  one-tenth  of 
Dinky-Dunk's  crop  tied  up  by  midnight.  It  is  very 
cold,  and  Olie  has  lugubriously  announced  that  it's 
sure  going  to  freeze.  So  three  times  I've  gone  out 
to  look  at  the  thermometer  and  three  times  I've  said 
my  solemn  little  prayer:  "Dear  God,  please  don't 
freeze  poor  Dinky-Dunk's  wheat!"  And  the  Lord 
heard  that  prayer,  for  a  Chinook  came  about  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  the  mercury  slowly  but 
steadily  rose. 

254 


Thursday  the  Fourteenth 

I  HAD  a  great  deal  to  talk  about  to-day.  But  I 
can't  write  much.  .  .  .  I'm  afraid.  I  dread 
being  alone.  I  wish  I'd  been  a  better  wife  to  my 
poor  old  gold-bricked  Dinky-Dunk!  But  we  are 
what  ve  are,  character-kinks  and  all.  So  when 
he  understands,  perhaps  he'll  forgive  me.  I'm 
like  a  cottontail  in  the  middle  of  a  wheat-patch 
with  the  binders  going  round  and  round  and  every 
swathe  cutting  away  a  little  more  of  my  covering. 
And  there  can't  be  much  more  hiding  away  with' 
my  secret.  But  I  shall  never  openly  speak  of  it. 
The  binder  can  cut  off  my  feet  first,  the  same  as 
Olie's  did  with  that  mother-rabbit  which  stood  trem 
bling  over  her  nest  of  young.  Why  must  life  some 
times  be  so  ruthlessly  tragic?  And  why,  oh,  why, 
are  women  sometimes  so  absurd?  And  why  should  I 
be  afraid  of  what  every  woman  who  would  justify 
her  womanhood  must  face?  Still,  I'm  afraid! 
255 


Wednesday  the  Fifth 

THREE  long  weeks  since  those  last  words  were 
written.  And  what  shall  I  say,  or  how  shall  I 
begin  ? 

In  the  first  place,  everything  seemed  gray.  The 
bed  was  gray,  my  own  arms  were  gray,  the  walls 
looked  gray,  the  window-glass  was  gray,  and  even 
Dinky-Dunk's  face  was  gray.  I  didn't  want  to 
move,  for  a  long  time.  Then  I  got  the  strength  to 
tell  Mrs.  Watson  that  I  wanted  to  speak  to  my  hus 
band.  She  was  wrapping  something  up  in  soft 
flannel  and  purring  over  it  quite  proudly  and  call 
ing  it  a  blessed  little  lamb.  When  poor  pale-faced 
Dinky-Dunk  bent  over  the  bed  I  asked  him  if  it  had 
a  receding  chin,  or  if  it  had  a  nose  like  Olie's.  And 
he  said  it  had  neither,  that  it  was  a  king  of  a  boy 
and  could  holler  like  a  good  one. 

Then  I  told  Dinky-Dunk  what  had  been  in  my 
secret  soul,  for  so  many  months.  Uncle  Carlton  had 
256 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

a  receding  chin,  a  boneless,  dew-lappy  sort  of  chin 
I'd  always  hated,  and  I'd  been  afraid  it  might  kind 
of  skip-and-carry  one  and  fasten  itself  on  my  inno 
cent  offspring.  Then,  later  on.  I'd  been  afraid  of 
Olie's  frozen  nose,  with  the  split  down  the  center. 
And  all  the  while  I  kept  remembering  what  the  Mor- 
leys'  old  colored  nurse  had  said  to  me  when  I  was  a 
schoolgirl,  a  girl  of  only  seventeen,  spending1  thrat 
first  vacation  of  mine  in  Virginia :  "Lawdy,  chile, 
yuh  ain't  no  bigger'n  a  minit!  Don't  yuh  nebber 
hab  no  baby,  chile!" 

Isn't  it  funny  how  those  foolish  old  things  stick 
in  a  woman's  memory?  For  I've  had  my  baby  and 
I'm  still  alive,  and  although  I  sometimes  wanted  a 
girl,  Dinky-Dunk  is  so  ridiculously  proud  and 
happy  seeing  it's  a  boy  that  I  don't  much  care. 
But  I'm  going  to  get  well  and  strong  in  a  few  mer^e 
days,  and  here  against  my  breast  I'm  holding  the 
God-love-itest  little  lump  of  pulsing  manhood,  the 
darlingest,  solemnest,  placidest,  pinkest  hope  of  the 
white  race  that  ever  made  life  full  and  perfect  for  a 
foolish  mother. 

257 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

The  doctor  who  finally  got  here — when  both 
Olga  and  Mrs.  Dixon  agreed  that  he  couldn't  pos 
sibly  do  a  bit  of  good — announced  that  I  had  come 
through  it  all  like  the  true  Prairie  Woman  that  I 
was.  Then  he  somewhat  pompously  and  redun 
dantly  explained  that  I  was  a  highly  organized  indi- 
ridual,  "a  bit  high-strung,"  as  Mrs.  Dixon  put  it. 
I  smiled  into  the  pillow  when  he  turned  to  my  anx 
ious-eyed  Dinky-Dunk  and  condoningly  enlarged  on 
the  fact  that  there  was  nothing  abnormal  about  a. 
Toman  like  me  being — well,  rather  abnormal  as  to 
temper  and  nerves  during  the  last  few  months.  But 
Dinky-Dunk  cut  him  short. 

"On  the  contrary,  sir ;  she's  been  wonderful,  sim 
ply  wonderful!"  Dinky-Dunk  stoutly  declared. 
Then  he  reached  for  my  hand  under  the  coverlet 
"She's  been  an  angel !" 

I  squeezed  the  hand  that  held  mine.  Then  I 
looked  at  the  doctor,  who  had  turned  away  to  give 
some  orders  to  Olga. 

"Doctor,"  I  quite  as  stoutly  declared,  "I've  been  a 
perfect  devil,  and  this  dear  old  liar  knows  it !"    But 
258 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

our  doctor  was  too  busy  to  pay  much  attention  to 
what  I  was  saying.  He  merely  murmured  that  it 
was  all  normal,  quite  normal,  under  the  circum 
stances.  So,  after  all,  I'm  just  an  ordinary,  every 
day  woman !  But  the  man  of  medicine  has  ordered 
me  to  stay  in  bed  for  twelve  days — which  Olga  re 
gards  as  unspeakably  preposterous,  since  one  day, 
she  proudly  announced,  was  all  her  mother  ever 
Asked  for.  Which  shows  the  disadvantages  of  be 
ing  too  civilized ! 


259 


Sunday  the  Ninth 

I'M  day  by  day  getting  stronger,  though  I'm  a 
lady  of  luxury  and  lie  in  bed  until  ten  every  morn 
ing.  To-day  when  I  was  sitting  up  to  eat  break 
fast,  with  my  hair  braided  in  two  tails  and  a  pink 
and  white  hug-me-tight  over  my  nightie,  Dinky- 
Dunk  came  in  and  sat  by  the  bed.  He  tried  to  soft- 
soap  me  by  saying  he'd  be  mighty  glad  when  I  was 
running  things  again  so  he  could  get  something  fit 
to  eat.  Olga,  he  admitted,  was  all  right,  but  she 
hadn't  the  touch  of  his  Gee-Gee.  He  confessed 
that  for  nearly  a  month  now  the  house  had  been  a 
damned  gynocracy  and  he  was  getting  tired  of  be 
ing  bossed  around  by  a  couple  of  women.  Mio  pic- 
cino  no  longer  looks  like  a  littered  whelp  of  the 
animal  world,  as  he  did  at  first.  His  wrinkled  little 
face  and  his  close-shut  eyes  used  to  make  me  think 
of  a  little  old  man,  with  all  the  wisdom  of  the  ages 
shut  up  in  his  tiny  body.  And  it  is  such  a  knowing 
260 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

little  body,  with  all  its  stored-up  instincts  and 
guardian  appetites !  My  little  tenor  robusto,  how 
he  can  sing  when  he's  hungry !  Last  night  I  sat 
up  in  bed,  listening  for  my  son's — Dinky-Dink's^* 
breathing.  At  first  I  thought  he  might  be  dead^  fee 
was  so  quiet.  Then  I  heard  his  lips  move  in  the 
rhapsodic  deglutition  of  babyland  dreams.  "Dinky- 
Dunk,"  I  demanded,  "what  would  we  do  if  Babe 
should  die?"  And  I  shook  him  to  make  him  answer. 
He  stared  up  at  me  with  a  sleepy  eye.  "That 
whale?"  he  commented  as  he  blinked  contentedly 
down  at  his  offspring  and  then  turned  over  and  went 
to  sleep.  But  I  slipped  a  hand  in  under  little 
Dinky-Dink's  body,  and  found  it  as  warm  as  a  nest 
ing  bird. 


Monday  the  Tenth 

I  NOTICED  'i  hat  Dinky-Dunk  had  not  been  smok 
ing  lately,  so  L  asked  him  what  had  become  of  the 
rest  of  his  cigars.  He  admitted  that  he  had  given 
them  to  Olie.  "When  ?"  I  asked.  And  Dinky-Dunk 
colored  up  as  he  answered,  rather  casually,  "Oh, 
the  day  Buddy  Boy  was  born!"  How  men  merge 
down  into  the  conventional  in  their  more  epochal 
moments ! 

The  second  day  after  my  baby's  birth  Olga 
rather  took  my  breath  away  by  carrying  in  as  neat 
a  little  wooden  cradle  as  any  prince  of  the  royal 
blood  would  care  to  lie  in.  Olie  had  made  it.  He 
had  worked  on  it  during  his  spare  hours  in  the  eve 
ning,  and  even  Dinky-Dunk  hadn't  known.  I  made 
Olga  hold  it  up  at  the  foot  of  the  bed  so  I  could  see 
it  better.  It  had  been  scroll-sawed  and  sand-pa- 
yered  and  polished  like  any  factory-made  baby-bed, 
and  my  faithful  old  Olie  had  even  attempted  some 
262 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

hand-carving  along  the  rockers  and  the  head-board. 
But  as  I  looked  at  it  I  realized  that  it  must  have 
taken  weeks  and  weeks  to  make.  And  that  gave 
me  an  odd  little  earthquaky  feeling  in  the  neighbor 
hood  of  the  midriff,  for  I  knew  then  that  my  secret 
had  been  no  secret  at  all.  Dinky-Dunk,  by  the  way, 
has  just  announced  that  we're  to  have  a  touring- 
car.  He  says  I've  earned  it ! 


Tuesday  the  Eleventh 

YESTERDAY  was  so  warm  that  I  sat  out  in  the 
sun  and  took  an  ozone-bath.  I  sat  there,  staring 
down  at  my  boy,  realizing  that  I  was  a  mother.  My 
boy — bone  of  my  bone  and  flesh  of  my  flesh !  It's 
so  hard  to  believe !  And  now  I  am  one  of  the  mystic 
chain,  and  no  longer  the  idle  link.  I  am  a  mother. 
And  I'd  give  an  arm  if  you  and  Chinkie  and  Schem- 
ing-Jack  could  see  my  boy,  at  this  moment.  He's 
like  a  rose-leaf  and  he's  got  six  dimples,  not  count 
ing  his  hands  and  feet — for  I've  found  and  kissed 
*em  all — on  different  parts  of  his  blessed  little  body. 
Dinky-Dunk  came  back  from  Buckhorn  yesterday 
«vith  a  lot  of  the  foolishest  things  you  ever  clapped 
eyes  on — a  big  cloth  elephant  that  grunts  when 
•"^u  pull  its  tail,  a  musical  spinning-top,  a  high- 
chair,  and  a  projecting  lantern.  They're  foi 
Dinky-Dink,  of  course.  But  it  will  be  a  week  o.? 
two  before  he  can  manipulate  the  lantern! 
264- 


Wednesday  the  Thirteenth 

DINKY-DUNK  has  taken  Mrs.  Dixon  home  and 
come  back  with  a  brand-new  "hand,"  which,  of 
course,  is  prairie-land  synecdoche  for  a  new  hired 
man.  His  name  is  Terry  Dillon^  and  as  the  name 
might  lead  you  to  imagine,  he's  about  as  Irish  as 
Paddy's  pig.  He  is  blessed  with  a  potato-lip,  a  but 
termilk  brogue,  and  a  nose  which,  if  he  follows  it 
faithfully,  will  some  day  lead  him  straight  to 
Heaven.  But  Terry,  Dinky-Dunk  tells  me,  is  a 
steady  worker  and  a  good  man  with  horses,  and 
that  of  course  rounds  him  out  as  a  paragon  in  the 
eyes  of  my  slave-driving  lord  and  master.  I  asked 
where  Terry  came  from.  Dinky-Dunk,  with  rather 
a  grim  smile,  acknowledged  that  he'd  been  working 
for  Percy. 

Terry,  it  seems,  has  no  particular  love  for  an 
Englishman.  And  Percy  had  affronted  his  haughty 
Irish  spirit  with  certain  ideas  of  caste  which  can't 
265 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

be  imported  into  the  Canadian  West,  where  the 
hired  man  is  every  whit  as  good  as  his  master — as 
that  master  will  tragically  soon  find  out  if  he  tries 
to  make  his  help  eat  at  second  table !  At  any  rate, 
Percy  and  potato-lipped  Terry  developed  friction 
which  ended  up  in  every  promise  of  a  fight,  only 
Dinky-Dunk  arrived  in  the  nick  of  time  and  took 
Terry  off  his  harassed  neighbor's  hands.  I  told 
him  he  had  rather  the  habit  of  catching  people  on 
the  bounce.  But  I  am  reserving  my  opinion  of 
Terry  Dillon.  We  are  a  happy  family  here,  and  1 
want  no  trouble-makers  in  my  neighborhood. 

I  have  been  studying  some  of  the  New  York  mag 
azines,  going  rather  hungrily  through  their  adver 
tisements  where  such  lovely  layettes  are  described 
My  poor  little  Dinky-Dink's  things  are  so  plain 
and  rough  and  meager.  I  envy  those  city  mothers 
with  all  those  beautiful  linens  and  laces.  But  my 
little  Spartan  man-child  has  never  known  a  single 
iay's  sickness.  And  some  day  he'll  show  'em ! 


26C 


WHEN  Olie  came  in  after  dinner  yesterday  I 
asked  him  where  my  husband  was.  Olie,  after 
some  hesitation,  admitted  that  he  was  out  in  the 
stable.  I  asked  just  what  Dinky-Dunk  was  doing 
there,  for  I'd  noticed  that  after  each  meal  he  slipped 
silently  away.  Again  Olie  hesitated.  Then  he 
finally  admitted  that  he  thought  maybe  my  lord  was 
out  there  smoking.  So  I  went  out,  and  there  I 
found  my  poor  old  Dinky-Dunk  sitting  on  a  grain- 
box  puffing  gloomily  away  at  his  old  pipe.  For  a 
minute  or  two  he  didn't  see  me,  so  I  went  right  over 
to  him.  "What  does  this  mean?"  I  demanded. 

"Why?"  he  rather  guiltily  equivocated. 

"Why  are  you  smoking  out  here?" 

"I — er — I  rather  thought  you  might  think  it 
wouldn't  be  good  for  the  Boy!"  He  looked  pa 
thetic  as  he  said  that,  I  don't  know  why,  though 
I  loved  him  for  it.  He  made  me  think  of  a  king 
267 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

who'd  been  dethroned,  an  outsider,  a  man  without 
a  home.  It  brought  a  lump  into  my  throat. 

I  wormed  my  way  up  close  to  him  on  the  grain- 
box,  so  that  he  had  to  hold  me  to  keep  from  falling 
off  the  end.  "Listen  to  me,"  I  commanded.  "You 
are  my  True  Love  and  my  Kaikobad  and  my  Man- 
God  and  my  Soul-Mate!  And  no  baby  is  ever  go 
ing  to  come  between  me  and  you !" 

"You  shouldn't  say  those  awful  things,"  he  de 
clared,  but  he  did  it  only  half-heartedly. 

"But  I  want  you  to  sit  and  smoke  with  me,  be 
loved,  the  same  as  you  always  did,"  I  told  him.  "We 
can  leave  the  windows  open  a  little  and  it  won't  hurt 
Dinky-Dink,  for  that  boy  gets  more  ozone  than  any 
city  child  that  was  ever  wheeled  out  in  the  Mall! 
It  can't  possibly  hurt  him.  What  hurts  me  is  being 
away  from  you  so  much.  And  now  give  me  a  hug, 
a  tight  one,  and  tell  me  that  you  still  love  your 
Lady  Bird !"  He  gave  me  two,  and  then  two  more, 
until  Tumble- Weed  turned  round  in  his  stall  and 
whinnied  for  us  to  behave. 


268 


Friday  the  Fifteenth 

I'VE  been  keeping  Terry  under  my  eye,  and  i 
don't  believe  he's  a  trouble-maker.  His  first  mov< 
was  to  lift  Babe  out  of  the  cradle,  hold  him  up  anc 
publicly  announce  that  he  was  a  darlin'.  Then 
he  pointed  out  to  me  what  a  wonderful  head  the 
child  had,  feeling  his  frontal  bone  and  declaring 
he  was  sure  to  make  a  great  scholar  in  his  time. 
Dinky-Dunk,  grinning  at  the  sober  way  in  which 
I  was  swallowing  this,  pointedly  inquired  of  Terry 
whether  it  was  Milton  or  Archimedes  that  Babe 
most  resembled  as  to  skull  formation.  But  it  isn't 
Terry's  blarney  that  has  made  me  capitulate;  it's 
the  fact  that  he  has  proved  so  companionable  and 
has  slipped  so  quietly  into  his  place  in  our  little 
lonely  circle  of  lives  on  this  ragged  edge  of  no 
where. 

And  he's  as  clean  as  a  cat,  shaving  every  blessed 
morning  with  a  little  old  broken-handled  razor 
269 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

which  he  strops  on  a  strip  of  oiled  bootleg.  He 
declares  that  razor  to  be  the  finest  bit  of  steel  in 
all  the  Americas,  and  showed  off  before  Olie  and 
Olga  yesterday  morning  by  shaving  without  a  look 
ing-glass,  which  trick  he  said  he  learned  in  the 
army.  He  also  gave  Olie  a  hair-cut,  which  was 
badly  needed,  and  on  Sunday  has  promised  to 
rig  up  a  soldering-iron  and  mend  all  my  pans  for 
me.  He  looks  little  over  twenty,  but  is  really 
thirty  and  more,  and  has  been  in  India  and  Mexico 
and  Alaska. 

I  caught  him  neatly  darning  his  own  woolen 
socks.  Instead  of  betraying  shame  at  being  de 
tected  in  that  effeminate  pastime  he  proudly  ex 
plained  that  he'd  learned  to  do  a  bit  of  stitching 
in  the  army.  He  hasn't  many  possessions,  but 
he's  very  neat  in  his  arrangement  of  them.  A 
good  soldier,  he  solemnly  told  me,  always  had  to 
be  a  bit  of  an  old  maid.  "And  you  were  a  grand 
soldier,  Terry,  I  know,"  I  frankly  told  him.  "I've 
done  a  bit  av  killing  in  me  time!"  he  proudly  ac 
knowledged.  But  as  he  sat  there  darning  his  sock- 
270 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Aeel  he  looked  as  though  he  couldn't  kill  a  field 
mouse.  And  in  his  idle  hours  he  reads  Nick  Car 
ter,  a  series  cf  paper-bound  detective  stories,  al 
most  worn  to  tatters,  which  he  is  going  through 
for  the  second  or  third  time.  These  adventures, 
I  find,  he  later  recounts  to  Olie,  who  is  slowly  but 
surely  succumbing  to  the  poison  of  the  penny- 
dreadful  and  the  virus  of  the  shilling-shocker!  I 
even  caught  Dinky-Dunk  sitting  up  over  one  of 
these  blood-curdling  romances  the  other  night, 
though  he  laughed  a  little  as  I  dragged  him  off 
to  bed,  at  the  absurdity  of  the  situations.  Terry's 
eyes  lighted  up  when  he  saw  my  books  and  maga 
zines.  When  I  told  him  he  could  take  anything 
he  wanted,  he  beamed  and  said  it  would  sure  be 
a  glorious  winter  he'd  be  having,  with  all  that  book- 
reading  when  the  long  nights  came.  But  before 
those  long  nights  are  over  I'm  going  to  try  to 
pilot  Terry  into  the  channels  of  respectable  liter 
ature. 


Saturday  the  Sixteenth 

I  LOVE  the  milky  smell  of  my  Dinky-Dink  better 
than  the  perfume  of  any  flower  that  ever  grew. 
He's  so  strong  now  that  he  can  almost  lift  himself 
up  by  his  two  little  hands.  At  least  he  can  really 
and  actually  give  a  little  pull.  Two  days  ago  our 
touring-car  arrived.  It  is  a  beauty.  It  skims  over 
these  smooth  prairie  trails  like  a  yacht.  From 
now  on  we  can  run  into  Buckhorn,  do  our  shopping, 
And  run  out  again  inside  of  two  or  three  hours. 
We  can  also  reach  the  larger  towns  without  trou 
ble  and  it  will  be  so  much  easier  to  gather  up  what 
we  need  for  Casa  Grande.  Dinky-Dink  seems  to 
love  the  car.  Ten  minutes  after  we  have  started 
out  he  is  always  fast  asleep.  Olga,  who  holds  him 
in  the  back  seat  when  I  get  tired,  sits  in  rapt  and 
silent  bliss  as  we  rock  along  at  thirty  miles  an 
hour.  And  no  wonder,  for  it's  the  next  best  thing 
to  sailing  out  on  the  briny  deep ! 
272 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

I  can't  help  thinking  of  Terry's  attitude  toward 
Olga.  He  doesn't  actively  dislike  her,  but  he 
quietly  ignores  her,  even  more  so  than  Olie  does. 
I've  been  wondering  why  neither  of  them  has  suc- 
•eumbed  to  such  physical  grandeur.  Perhaps  it's 
because  they're  physical  themselves.  And  then  I 
think  her  largeness  oppresses  Terry,  for  no  man, 
whether  he's  been  a  soldier  or  not,  likes  to  be  over 
topped  by  a  woman. 

The  one  exception,  of  course,  is  Percy.  But 
Percy  is  a  man  of  imagination.  He  can  realize 
that  Olga  is  more  than  a  mere  type.  He  agrees 
with  me  that  she's  a  sort  of  miracle.  To  Terry 
she's  only  a  mute  and  muscular  Finnish  servant- 
girl  with  an  arm  like  a  grenadier's.  To  Percy 
she  is  a  goddess  made  manifest,  a  superhuman  body 
of  superhuman  vigor  and  beauty  and  at  the  same 
time  a  body  crowned  with  majesty  and  robed  in 
mystery.  And  I  still  incline  to  Percy's  opinion* 
Olga  is  always  wonderful  to  me.  Her  lips  are 
such  a  soft  and  melting  red,  the  red  of  perfect 
animal  health.  The  very  milkiness  of  her  skin  is 
273 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

an  advertisement  of  that  queenly  and  all-conquer 
ing  vitality  which  lifts  her  so  above  the  ordinary 
ruck  of  humanity.  And  her  great  ruminative  eyes 
are  as  clear  and  limpid  as  any  woodland  pool. 

She  blushes  rose  color  sometimes  when  Percy 
comes  in.  I  think  he  finds  a  secret  joy  in  sensing 
that  reaction  in  anything  so  colossal.  But  he  de 
fends  himself  behind  that  mask  of  cool  imperson 
ality  which  is  the  last  attribute  of  the  mental  aris 
tocrat,  no  matter  what  his  feelings  may  be.  His 
attitude  toward  Terry,  by  the  way,  is  a  remarkably 
companionable  one  in  view  of  the  fact  of  their 
earlier  contentions.  They  can  let  by-gones  be  by 
gones  and  talk  and  smoke  and  laugh  together.  It 
is  Terry,  if  any  one,  who  is  just  a  wee  bit  con 
descending.  And  I  imagine  that  it  is  the  aura  of 
Olga  which  has  brought  about  this  oddly  democ 
ratizing  condition  of  affairs.  She  seems  to  give 
a  new  relationship  to  things,  softening  a  point 
here  and  illuminating  a  point  there  as  quietly  as 
aaoonlight  itself  can  do. 


274 


Monday  the  Seventeenth 

YESTERDAY  Olga  carried  home  a  whole  pailful 
of  mushrooms,  for  an  Indian  summer  seems  to  have 
brought  on  a  second  crop  of  them.  They  were 
lovely.  But  she  refused  to  eat  any.  I  asked  her 
why.  She  heaved  her  huge  shoulders  and  said 
she  didn't  know.  But  she  does,  I  feel  sure,  and 
I've  been  wondering  why  she's  afraid  of  anything 
that  can  taste  so  good,  once  they  are  creamed  and 
heaped  on  a  square  of  toast.  As  for  me 

I  love  'em,  I  love  'em,  and  who  shall  dare 
To  chide  me  for  loving  that  mushroom  fare? 


275 


Wednesday  the  Nineteenth 

I  FOUND  myself  singing  fW  all  I  was  worth  as 
I  did  my  work  this  morning.  Dinky-Dunk  came 
and  stood  in  the  door  and  said  it  sounded  like 
old  times.  I  feel  strong  again  and  have  ventured 
to  ask  my  lord  and  master  if  I  couldn't  have  the 
weentiest  gallop  on  Paddy  once  more.  But  he's 
made  me  promise  to  wait  for  a  week  or  two.  The 
last  two  or  three  nights  have  been  quite  cold,  and 
away  off,  miles  and  miles  across  the  prairie,  we 
can  see  the  glow  of  fires  where  different  ranchers 
are  burning  their  straw,  after  the  wind-stackers 
have  blown  it  from  the  threshing  machines.  Some 
times  it  burns  all  night  long. 


276 


Friday  the  Twenty-firsi 

I  HAVE  this  morning  found  out  why  Olga  won't 
eat  mushrooms.  It  was  very  cold  again  last  night, 
for  this  time  of  year.  Percy  came  over,  and  we 
had  a  ripping  fire  and  popped  Ontario  pop-corn 
with  Ontario  maple  sirup  poured  over  it.  Olga 
and  Olie  and  Terry  all  came  in  and  sat  about  the 
stove.  And  being  absolutely  happy  and  contented 
and  satisfied  with  life  in  general,  we  promptly  fell 
to  talking  horrors,  the  same  as  a  cook  stirs  lemon 
juice  into  her  pudding-sauce,  I  suppose,  to  keep 
Jts  sweetness  from  being  too  cloying.  That  revel 
in  the  by-paths  of  the  Poesque  began  with  Dinky- 
Dunk's  casual  reference  to  the  McKinnon  ranch 
and  Percy's  inquiry  as  to  why  its  earlier  owner 
had  given  it  up.  So  Dinky-Dunk  recounted  the 
story  of  Andrew  Cochrane's  death.  And  it  was 
noticeable  that  poor  old  Olie  betrayed  visible  signs 
of  distress  at  this  tale  of  a  young  ranchman  being 
277 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

frozen  to  death  alone  in  his  shack  in  mid-winter. 
So  Dinky-Dunk,  apparently  with  malice  prepense, 
enlarged  on  his  theme,  describing  how  all  young 
Cochrane's  stock  had  starved  in  their  stalls  and  how 
his  collie  dog  which  had  been  chained  to  a  kennel- 
box  outside  the  shack  had  first  drawn  attention  to 
the  tragedy.  A  government  inspector,  in  riding 
past,  had  noticed  the  shut-up  shack,  had  pounded 
on  the  door,  and  had  promptly  discovered  the  skel 
eton  of  the  dog  with  a  chain  and  collar  still  at 
tached  to  the  clean-picked  neckbones.  And  inside 
the  shack  he  had  found  the  dead  man  himself,  as 
life-like,  because  of  the  intense  cold,  as  though 
he  had  fallen  asleep  the  night  before. 

It  was  not  a  pleasant  story,  and  my  efforts  to 
picture  the  scene  gave  me  rather  a  bristly  feeling 
along  the  pin-feather  area  of  my  anatomy.  An^ 
again  undoubted  signs  of  distress  were  manifest 
in  poor  Olie.  The  face  of  that  simple-souled  Swede 
took  on  such  a  look  of  wondering  trouble  that 
Dinky-Dunk  deliberately  and  at  great  detail  told 
of  a  ghost  that  had  been  repeatedly  seen  in  an 
278 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

abandoned  wickyup   a   little   farther  west   in   the 
province. 

And  that,  of  course,  fired  the  Celtic  soul  of  Terry, 
who  told  of  the  sister  of  his  Ould  Counthry  mas 
ter  who  had  once  been  taken  to  a  hospital.  And 
just  at  dusk  on  the  third  day  after  that  his  young 
master  was  walking  down  the  dark  hall.  As  he 
passed  his  sister's  door,  there  she  stood  all  in  white, 
quietly  brushing  her  hair,  as  plain  as  day  to  his 
eyes.  And  with  that  the  master  rushed  down-stairs 
to  his  mother  asking  how  Sheila  had  got  back  from 
the  hospital.  And  his  old  mother,  being  slow  of 
movement,  started  for  Sheila's  room.  But  before 
she  so  much  as  reached  the  foot  of  the  stairs  a 
neighbor  woman  came  running  in,  wiping  her  eyes 
with  her  shawl-end  and  saying,  "Poor  Sheila  died 
this  minute  over  t'  the  hospital !"  I  can't  tell  it 
as  Terry  told  it,  and  I  don't  know  whether  he 
Aimself  believed  in  it  or  not,  but  the  huge  bulk 
of  Olie  Larson  sat  there  bathed  in  a  fine  sweat, 
with  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  stove  front.  He  was 
by  no  means  happy,  and  yet  he  seemed  unable  to 
279 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

tear  himself  away,  just  as  Gimlets  and  I  used  to 
sit  chained  to  the  spot  while  Grandfather  Heppel- 
white  continued  to  intone  the  dolorous  history  of 
the  "Babes  in  the  Woods"  until  our  ultimate  and 
inevitable  collapse  into  tears ! 

So  Percy,  who  is  not  without  his  spirit  of  rag 
ging,  told  several  whoppers,  which  he  later  con 
fessed  came  from  the  Society  of  Psychical  Research 
records.  And  I  huskily  recounted  Uncle  Carlton's 
story  of  the  neurasthenic  lady  patient  who  went 
into  a  doctor's  office  and  there  beheld  a  skull  stand 
ing  on  his  polished  rosewood  desk.  Then,  as  she 
sat  staring  at  it,  this  skull  started  to  move  slowly 
toward  her.  It  later  turned  out  to  be  only  a  plas- 
ter-of-Paris  paper  weight,  and  a  mouse  had  got 
inside  it  and  found  a  piece  of  cracker  there — and 
a  cracker,  I  had  to  explain  to  Percy,  was  the  name 
under  which  a  biscuit  usually  masqueraded  in  Amer 
ica.  That  mouse,  in  its  efforts  to  get  the  last  of 
that  cracker,  had,  of  course,  shifted  the  skull  along 
the  polished  wood. 

This  reminded  Dinky-Dunk  of  the  three  medica; 
280 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

students  who  had  tried  to  frighten  their  landlady5! 
daughter  by  smuggling  an  arm  from  the  dissect 
ing  room  and  hiding  it  under  the  girl's  pillow. 
Dinky-Dunk  even  solemnly  avowed  that  the  three 
men  were  college  chums  of  his.  They  waited  to 
hear  the  girl's  scream,  but  as  there  was  nothing 
but  silence  they  finally  stole  into  the  room.  And 
there  they  saw  the  girl  sitting  on  the  floor,  hold 
ing  the  arm  in  her  hands.  As  she  sat  there  she 
was  mumbling  to  herself  and  eating  one  end  of  it ! 
Of  course  the  poor  thing  had  gone  stark  staring 
mad. 

Olie  groaned  audibly  at  this  and  wiped  his  fore 
head  with  his  coat-sleeve.  But  before  he  could 
get  away  Terry  started  to  tell  of  the  four-bottle 
Irish  sea  captain  who  was  sober  only  when  at  sea 
and  one  night  in  port  stumbled  up  to  bed  three 
sheets  in  the  wind.  When  he  had  navigated  into 
what  he  thought  was  his  own  room  he  was  as 
tounded  to  find  a  man  already  in  bed  there,  and 
even  drunker  than  he  was  himself,  too  drunk,  in 
fact,  to  move.  And  even  the  candles  had  been  left 
281 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

burning.  But  the  old  captain  climbed  over  next 
to  the  wall,  clothes  and  all,  and  would  have  been 
fast  asleep  in  two  minutes  if  two  stout  old  ladies 
hadn't  come  in  and  started  to  cry  and  say  a  prayer 
or  two  at  the  side  of  the  bed.  Thereupon  the  old 
captain,  muddled  as  he  was,  quietly  but  inquisitively 
reached  over  and  touched  the  man  beside  him.  And 
that  man  teas  cold  as  ice!  The  captain  gave  one 
howl  and  made  for  the  door.  But  the  old  ladies 
went  first,  and  they  all  rolled  down  the  stairs  one 
after  the  other  and  the  three  of  them  up  and  ran 
}ike  the  wind.  "And  niver  wanst  did  they  stop," 
declared  the  brogue-mouthing  Terry,  "till  they 
lept  flat  against  the  sea-wall!" 

Olie,  who  had  moved  away  to  the  far  end  of  thi 
teble,  got  up  at  this  point  and  went  to  the  door 
and  looked  out.  He  sighed  lugubriously  as  he 
stared  into  the  darkness  of  the  night.  The  outer 
gloom,  apparently,  was  too  much  for  him,  as  he 
oame  slowly  and  reluctantly  back  to  his  chair  at 
the  far  end  of  the  table  and  it  was  plain  to  set 
*hat  he  was  as  frightened  as  a  five-year-old  child. 
282 


THE    TRAIRIE    WIFE 

The  men,  I  suppose,  would  have  badgered  him 
until  midnight,  for  Terry  had  begun  a  story  of  a 
negro  who'd  been  sent  to  rob  a  grave  and  found 
the  dead  man  not  quite  dead.  But  I  declared  that 
we'd  had  enough  of  horrors  and  declined  to  hear 
anything  more  about  either  ghosts  or  deaders.  I 
was,  in  fact,  getting  just  a  wee  bit  creepy  along 
the  nerve-ends  myself.  And  Babe  whimpered  a 
little  in  his  cradle  and  brought  us  all  suddenly 
back  from  the  Wendigo  Age  to  the  time  of  the 
kerosene  lamp.  "Fra'  witches  and  warlocks,"  I 
solemnly  intoned,  "fra'  wurricoos  and  evil  speerits, 
and  fra'  a'  ferly  things  that  wheep  and  gang  bump 
in  the  nicht,  Guid  Lord  deliver  us !"  And  that  in 
cantation,  I  feel  sure,  cleared  the  air  for  both  my 
own  sprite-threatened  offspring  and  for  the  simple- 
minded  Olie  himself,  although  Dinky-Dunk  ex 
plained  that  my  Scotch  was  rather  worse  than  the 
stories. 

But  it  was  this  morning  after  breakfast  that  I 
learned  from  Olga  why  she  never  cared  to  eat  mush 
rooms.  And  all  day  long  her  stor}  Ws  been  hang- 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ing  between  me  and  the  sun,  like  a  cloud.  Not 
that  there  is  anything  so  wonderful  about  the  story 
itself,  outside  of  its  naked  tragedy.  But  I  think 
it  was  more  the  way  that  huge  placid-eyed  girl 
told  it,  with  her  broken  English  and  her  occasional 
pauses  to  grope  after  the  right  word.  Or  perhaps 
it  was  because  it  earners  such  a  grim  reality  after 
the  trifling  grotesqueries  of  the  night  before.  At 
any  rate,  as  I  heard  it  this  morning  it  seemed  as 
.  terrible  as  anything  in  Tolstoi's  Heart  of  Dark 
ness,  and  more  than  once  sent  my  thoughts  back 
to  the  sorrows  of  the  house  of  CEdipus.  It  startled 
me  a  little,  too,  for  I  never  thought  to  catch  an 
echo  of  Greek  tragedy  out  of  the  full  soft  lips  of 
a  Finnish  girl  who  was  helping  me  wash  my  break 
fast  dishes. 

It  began  as  I  was  deciding  on  my  dinner  menu, 
and  looked  to  see  if  all  our  mushrooms  had  been 
used  up.  That  prompted  me  to  ask  the  girl  why 
she  never  ate  them.  I  could  see  a  barricaded  look 
come  into  her  eyes  but  she  merely  shrugged  and 
said  that  sometimes  they  were  poison  and  killed 
284 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

people.  I  told  her  that  this  was  absurd  and  that  any 
one  with  ordinary  intelligence  soon  got  to  know  a 
meadow  mushroom  when  he  saw  one.  But  some 
times,  Olga  insisted,  they  were  death  cups.  If  you 
ate  a  death  cup  you  died,  and  nothing  could  save 
you.  I  tried  to  convince  her  that  this  was  just  a 
peasant  superstition,  but  she  announced  that  she 
had  seen  death  cups,  many  of  them,  and  had  seen 
people  who  had  been  killed  by  them.  And  then 
brokenly,  and  with  many  heavy  gestures  of  hesi 
tation,  she  told  me  the  story. 

Nearly  seventy  miles  northwest  of  us,  up  near 
her  old  home,  so  she  said,  a  Pole  named  Andrei 
Przenikowski  and  his  wife  used  to  live.  They  had 
one  son,  whose  name  was  Jozef.  They  were  poor, 
always  poor,  and  could  never  succeed.  So  when 
Jozef  was  fifteen  years  old  he  went  to  the  coast 
to  make  his  fortune.  And  the  old  father  and  mother 
had  a  hard  time  of  it,  for  old  Andrei  found  it  no 
jasy  thing  to  get  about,  having  had  his  feet  frozen 
pears  before.  He  stumped  around  like  a  hen  with 
frost-bitten  claws,  Olga  said,  and  his  wife,  old  as 
285 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

she  was,  had  to  help  him  in  the  fields.  One  whole 
winter,  he  told  Olga's  father,  they  had  lived  on 
turnips.  But  season  after  season  dragged  on,  and 
still  they  existed,  God  knows  how.  Of  Jozef  they 
never  heard  again.  But  with  Jozef  himself  it  was 
a  different  story.  The  boy  went  up  to  Alaska, 
before  the  days  of  the  Klondike  strike.  There  he 
worked  in  the  fisheries,  and  in  the  lumber  camps, 
and  still  later  he  joined  a  mining  outfit.  Then  ht 
went  in  to  the  Yukon. 

That  was  twelve  years  after  he  had  first  left 
home.  He  was  a  strong  man  by  this  time  and 
spoke  English  very  well.  And  the  next  year  he 
struck  luck,  and  washed  up  a  great  deal  of  gold, 
thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  gold.  But  he  saved 
it  all,  for  he  had  never  forgotten  the  old  folks 
on  their  little  farm.  So  he  gathered  up  his  money 
and  went  down  to  Seattle,  and  then  crossed  to 
Vancouver.  From  there  he  made  his  way  back  to 
his  old  home,  dressed  like  a  man  of  the  world  and 
wearing  a  big  gold  watch  and  chain  and  a  gold 
ring.  And  when  he  walked  in  on  the  old  folks  they 
286 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

failed  to  recognize  him — and  that  Jozef  thought 
the  finest  of  jokes.  He  filled  the  little  sod-covered 
shack  with  his  laughter,  for  he  was  happy.  He 
knew  that  for  the  rest  of  their  days  their  troubles 
had  all  ended.  So  he  walked  about  and  made  plans, 
but  still  he  did  not  tell  them  who  he  was.  It  was 
so  good  a  joke  that  he  intended  to  make  the  most 
of  it.  But  he  said  that  he  had  news  of  their  Jozef, 
who  was  not  so  badly  off  for  a  ne'er-do-well.  Be 
fore  he  left  the  next  day,  he  promised,  they  should 
be  told  about  their  boy.  And  he  laughed  again 
and  slapped  his  pocketful  of  gold  and  the  two  old 
folks  sat  blinking  at  him  in  awe,  until  he  announced 
that  he  was  hungry  and  confided  to  them  that  his 
friend  Jozef  had  once  told  him  there  were  won 
derful  mushrooms  round-about  at  that  season  of 
the  year. 

Andrei  and  his  wife  talked  together  in  the  cow 
shed,  before  the  old  man  hobbled  out  to  gather  the 
mushrooms.  Poverty  and  suffering  had  made  them 
hard  and  the  sight  of  this  stranger  with  so  much 
gold  was  too  much  for  them.  So  it  was  a  plate 
287 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

full  of  death  cups  which  Andrei's  wife  cooked  for 
the  brown-faced  stranger  with  the  loud  laugh.  And 
they  stood  about  and  watched  him  eat  them.  Then 
he  died,  -as  Andrei  knew  he  must  die.  But  the 
old  woman  hid  in  the  cow-shed  until  it  was  over, 
for  it  took  some  time.  Together  then  the  old  couple 
searched  the  dead  man's  bags  and  his  pockets. 
They  found  papers  and  certain  marks  on  his  body. 
They  knew  then  that  they  had  murdered  their  own 
son.  The  old  man  hobbled  all  the  way  to  the  near 
est  village,  where  he  sent  a  letter  to  Olga's  father 
and  bought  a  clothes-line  to  take  home.  The  jour 
ney  took  him  an  entire  day.  With  that  clothes 
line  Andrei  Przcnikowski  and  his  wife  hanged  them 
selves,  from  one  of  the  rafters  in  the  cow-shed. 

Olga  said  that  she  was  only  five  years  old  then, 
but  she  remembered  driving  over  with  the  others, 
after  the  letter  had  come  to  her  father's  place. 
She  can  still  remember  seeing  the  two  old  bodies 
hanging  side  by  side  and  twisting  slowly  about 
in  the  wind.  And  she  saw  what  was  left  of  the 
mushrooms.  She  says  she  can  never  forget  it  and 
288 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

dreams  of  it  quite  often.  And  Olga  is  not  what 
you  would  call  emotional.  She  told  me,  as  she 
dried  her  hands  and  hung  up  the  dish-pan,  that 
she  can  still  see  her  people  staring  down  at  what 
was  left  of  that  plate  of  poisoned  death  cups,  which 
had  turned  quite  black,  almost  as  black  as  the  deac 
she  saw  them  lift  up  on  the  dirty  bed. 


289 


YESTERDAY  was  Sunday  and  Olga  in  her  best  bib 
and  tucker  sat  out  in  the  sun  with  Dinky-Dink. 
She  seemed  perfectly  happy  merely  to  hold  hi  in. 
I  looked  out,  to  make  sure  he  was  all  right,  for  a 
few  days  before  Olga  had  nearly  given  me  heart 
failure  by  balancing  my  boy  on  one  huge  hand, 
as  though  he  were  a  mutton-chop,  so  that  the  ador 
ing  Olie  might  see  him  kick.  As  I  stood  watching- 
Olga  crooning  above  Buddy  Boy,  Percy  rode  uj.. 
Then  he  came  over  and  joined  Olga,  who  carefully 
lifted  up  the  veil  covering  Dinky-Dink's  face,  and 
showed  him  off  to  the  somewhat  intimidated  Percy. 
Percy  poked  a  finger  at  him,  and  made  absurd 
noises,  and  felt  his  legs  as  Olga  directed  and  then 
sat  down  in  front  of  Olga. 

They  talked  there  for  a  long  time,  quite  oblivious 
of  everything  about  them.  At  least  Percy  talked, 
for  Olga's  replies  seemed  mostly  monosyllabic.  But 
29C 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

she  kept  bathing  him  in  that  mystic  moonlight  stare 
of  hers  and  sometimes  she  showed  her  teeth  in  a 
slow  and  wistful  sort  of  smile.  Percy  clattered 
on,  quite  unconscious  that  I  was  standing  in  the 
doorway  staring  at  him.  They  seemed  to  be  great 
pals.  And  I've  been  wondering  what  they  talked 
about. 


991 


Wednesday  the  Fourteenth 

—  -  */ 

TO-DAY  after  dinner  Dinky-Dunk  took  the  Boy 
and  held  him  up  on  Paddy's  back,  where  he  looked 
like  a  bump  on  a  log.  And  that  started  me  think 
ing  that  it  wouldn't  be  so  long  before  my  little 
Snoozerette  had  a  pony  of  his  own  and  would  be 
cantering  off  across  the  prairie  like  a  monkey  on 
a  circus  horse.  For  I  want  my  boy  to  ride,  and 
ride  well.  And  then  a  little  later  he  would  be 
cantering  off  to  school.  And  then  it  wouldn't  be 
such  a  great  while  before  he'd  be  hitting  the  trail 
side  by  side  with  some  clear-eyed  prairie  girl  on 
a  dappled  pinto,  and  I'd  be  a  silvery-haired  old 
lady  wondering  if  that  clear-eyed  girl  was  good 
enough  for  my  son !  And  there  I  was,  as  usual, 
dreaming  of  the  future ! 

All  day  long  the  fact  that  Dinky-Dunk  is  get 
ting  extravagant  has  been  hitting  me  just  under 
the  fifth  rib.  So  I  asked  him  if  we  could  really 
292 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

afford  a  six-cylinder  car  with  tan  slip-covers  and 
electric  lights.  "Afford  it?"  he  echoed,  "of  course 
we  can  afford  it.  We  can  afford  anything.  Hang 
it  all,  our  lean  days  are  over  and  we  haven't  had 
the  imagination  to  wake  up  to  the  fact.  And 
d'you  know  what  I'm  going  to  do  if  certain  things 
come  my  way?  I'm  going  to  send  you  and  the 
Babe  down  to  New  York  for  the  winter !" 

"And  where  will  you  be?"  I  promptly  inquired. 
The  look  of  mingled  pride  and  determination  went 
out  of  his  face. 

"Oh,  I'll  have  to  hang  around  the  Polar  regions 
up  here  to  look  after  things.  But  you  and  the  Boy 
have  got  to  have  your  chance.  And  I'll  come  down 
for  two  weeks  at  Easter  and  bring  you  home  with 
me!" 

"And  will  you  be  enjoying  it  up  here?"  I  in 
quired. 

"Of  course  I  won't,"  acknowledged  Dinky-Dunk 
"But  think  what  it  will  mean  to  you,  Gee-Gee,  to 
have  a  few  months  in  the  city  again!     And  think 
you've  been  missing!" 
293 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

"Goosey-goosey-gander !"  I  said  as  I  gut  liis 
foolish  old  head  in  Chancery.  "I  want  you  t& 
listen  to  me.  There's  nothing  I've  been  missing. 
And  you  are  plum  locoed,  Honey  Chile,  if  you  think 
I  could  ever  be  happy  away  from  }TOU,  in  New  York 
or  any  other  city.  And  I  wouldn't  go  there  for 
the  winter  if  you  gave  me  the  Plaza  and  all  the 
Park  for  a  back  yard !" 

That  declaration  cf  mine  seemed  to  puzzle  him. 
"But  think  what  it  would  mean  to  the  Boy !"  he 
contended. 

"Well,  what?"  I  demanded. 

"Oh,  good — er — good  pictures  and  music  and  al? 
that  sort  of  thing!"  he  vaguely  explained.  I 
couldn't  help  laughing  at  him. 

"But,  Dinky-Dunk,  don't  you  think  Babe's  a 
month  or  so  too  young  to  take  up  Debussy  and 
the  Post-Impressionists,  you  big,  foolish,  adorable 
old  muddle-headed  captor  of  helpless  ladies' 
hearts !"  And  I  firmly  announced  that  he  could 
never,  never  get  rid  of  me. 


Thursday  the  Fifteenth 

Now  that  Olga  is  working  altogether  inside  with 
me  she  is  losing  quite  a  little  of  her  sunburn.  Her 
skin  is  softer  and  she  has  acquired  a  little  more 
of  the  Leonardo  di  Vinci  look.  She  almost  seems 
to  be  getting  spiritualized — but  it  may  be  simply 
because  she's  lengthened  her  skirts.  She  loves  Babe, 
and,  I'm  afraid,  is  rather  spoiling  him.  I  find  her 
a  better  and  better  companion,  not  only  because  she 
talks  more,  but  because  she  seems  in  some  way 
to  be  climbing  up  to  a  newer  level.  Between  whiles, 
I'm  teaching  her  to  cook.  She  learns  readily,  and 
is  proud  of  her  progress.  But  the  thing  of  which 
she  is  proudest  is  her  corsets.  And  they  do  make 
a  difference.  Even  Dinky-Dunk  has  noticed  this. 
Yesterday  he  stood  and  stared  after  her. 

"By  gum,"  he  sagely  remarked,  "that  girl  is 
getting  a  figure !"  Men  are  so  absurd.  When  this 
same  Olga  was  going  about  half  uncovered  he  neve." 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

even  noticed  her.  Now  that  she's  mystified  her 
aether  limbs  with  a  little  drapery  he  stands  star 
ing  after  her  as  though  she  were  a  Venus  dc  Mile 
come  to  life.  And  Olga  is  slowly  but  surely  losing 
a  little  of  her  Arcadian  simplicity.  Yesterday  I 
caught  her  burning  up  her  cowhide  boots.  She 
is  ashamed  of  them.  And  she  is  spending  most 
or  her  money  on  clothes,  asking  me  many  strange 
questions  as  to  apparel  and  carrying  off  my  fash 
ion  magazines  to  her  bedroom  for  secret  perusal. 
For  the  first  time  in  her  life  she  is  using  cold 
cream.  And  the  end  seems  to  justify  the  means, 
for  her  skin  is  noAv  like  apple  blossoms.  Rodin, 
I  feel  sure,  would  have  carried  that  Avoman  across 
America  on  his  back,  once  to  have  got  her  into  his 
atelier ! 

Last  week  I  persuaded  Terry  to  take  a  try  at 
Meredith  and  lent  him  my  green  cloth  copy  of 
Harry  Richmond.  Three  days  ago  I  found  the 
seventh  page  turned  down  at  the  corner,  and  sus 
pecting  that  this  marked  the  final  frontier  of  his 
advance.  I  tied  a  strand  of  green  silk  thread  about 
296 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

the  volume.  It  was  still  there  this  morning,  thougti 
Terry  daily  and  stoutly  maintains  that  he's  get 
ting  on  grand  with  that  fine  green  book  of  mine! 
But  at  noon  to-day  when  Dinky-Dunk  got  back 
from  Buckhorn  he  handed  Terry  a  parcel,  and  I 
noticed  the  latter  glanced  rather  uneasily  about 
as  he  unwrapped  it.  This  afternoon  I  discovered 
that  it  held  two  new  books  in  paper  covers.  One 
was  The  Hidden  Hand  and  the  other  was  called 
The  Terror  of  Tamaraska  Gulch.  Terry,  of  lute, 
has  been  doing  his  reading  in  his  own  room.  And 
"Vick  Carter,  apparently,  is  not  to  be  so  easily 
Displaced.  But  a  man  who  can  make  you  read 
his  books  for  the  third  time  must  be  a  genius. 
If  I  were  an  author,  that's  the  sort  of  man  I'd 
envy.  And  I  think  I'll  try  Percival  Benson  with 
The  Terror  of  Tamaraska  Gulch  when  Terry  is 
through  with  it! 


297 


Friday  the  Sixteenth 

WE  were  just  finishing  dinner  to-day,  and  an 
jncommonly  good  one  it  seemed  to  me,  and  I  was 
looking  contentedly  about  my  little  family  circle, 
wondering  what  more  life  could  hold  for  a  big 
healthy  hulk  of  a  woman  like  me,  when  the  drone 
and  purr  of  an  approaching  motor-car  broke 
through  the  sound  of  our  talk.  Dinky-Dunk,  in 
fact,  was  laying  down  the  law  about  the  farmer 
of  the  West,  maintaining  that  he  was  a  broader- 
spirited  and  bigger-minded  man  than  his  brother 
of  the  East,  and  pointing  out  that  the  westerner's 
wife  was  a  queen  who  if  she  had  little  ease  at  least 
had  great  honor.  And  I  was  just  thinking 
that  one  glorious  thing  about  this  same  queen  was 
that  she  at  least  escaped  from  all  the  twentieth- 
century  strain  and  dislocation  in  the  relationship 
between  city  men  and  women,  when  the  hum  of 
that  car  brought  me  back  to  earth  and  reminded 
298 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

me  that  I  might  have  a  tableful  of  guests  to  feed. 
The  car  itself  drew  up,  with  a  flutter  of  its  en 
gine,  half-way  between  the  shack  and  the  corral, 
and  at  that  sound  I  imagine  we  all  rather  felt  like 
Robinson  Crusoes  listening  to  the  rattle  of  an 
anchor  cable  in  Juan  Fernandez's  quietest  bay. 
And  through  the  open  window  I  could  make  out 
a  huge  touring-car  pretty  well  powdered  with  dust 
and  with  no  less  than  six  men  in  it. 

Terry,  all  eyes,  dove  for  the  window,  and  Olie, 
all  mouth,  for  the  door.  Olga  leaned  half-way 
across  the  table  to  look  out,  and  I  did  a  little  star 
ing  myself.  The  only  person  who  remained  quiet 
was  Dinky-Dunk.  He  knocked  out  his  pipe,  stuck 
it  in  his  pocket,  put  on  his  hat  and  caught  up 
a  package  of  papers  from  his  work  table.  Then 
he  stalked  out,  with  his  gray  fighting  look  about 
the  eyes.  He  went  out  just  as  one  of  the  bigger 
men  was  about  to  step  down  from  the  car,  so  that 
the  bigger  man  changed  his  mind  and  climbed  back 
in  his  seat,  like  a  king  reascending  his  throne. 
And  they  all  sat  there  so  sedate  and  non-committal 
299 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

and  dignified,  rather  like  dusty  pallbearers  in  an 
undertaker's  wagonette,  that  I  promptly  decided 
they  had  come  to  foreclose  a  mortgage  and  take 
my  Dinky-Dunk's  land  away  from  him,  at  one  fell 
swoop ! 

I  could  see  my  lord  walk  right  up  to  the  run 
ning-board,  with  curt  little  nods  to  his  visitors, 
and  I  knew  by  the  trim  of  his  shoulders  that  there 
was  trouble  ahead.  Yet  they  started  talking  quietly 
enough.  But  inside  of  two  minutes  my  Dinky- 
Dunk  was  shaking  his  fist  in  the  face  of  one  of 
the  younger  and  bigger  men  and  calling  him  a  liar 
and  somewhat  tautologically  accusing  him  of  know 
ing  that  he  was  a  liar  and  that  he  always  had  been 
one.  This  altogether  ungentlemanly  language  nat 
urally  brought  forth  language  quite  as  ungentle 
manly  from  the  accused,  who  stood  up  in  the  car 
and  took  his  turn  at  dancing  about  and  shaking 
his  own  fist.  And  then  the  others  seemed  to  take 
sides,  and  voices  rose  to  a  shout,  and  I  saw  that 
there  was  going  to  be  another  fight  at  Casa  Grande 
300 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

— and  I  promptly  decided  to  be  in  it.     So  off  went 
my  apron  and  out  I  went. 

It  was  funny.  For,  oddly  enough,  the  effect  of 
my  entrance  on  the  scene  was  like  that  on  a  noisy 
class-room  at  the  teacher's  return.  The  tumult 
stopped,  rather  sheepishly,  and  that  earful  of  men 
instinctively  slipped  on  their  armor  plate  of  over- 
obsequious  sex  gallantry.  They  knew  I  wasn't  a 
low-brow.  I  went  right  up  to  them,  though  some 
thing  about  their  funereal  discomfiture  made  me 
smile.  So  Dinky-Dunk,  mad  as  a  wet  hen  though 
he  was,  had  to  introduce  every  man- jack  of  them 
to  me!  One  was  a  member  of  Parliament,  and 
another  belonged  to  some  kind  of  railway  com 
mittee,  and  another  was  a  road  construction  official, 
and  another  was  a  mere  capitalist  who  owned  two 
or  three  newspapers.  The  man  Dinky-Dunk  had 
been  calling  a  liar  was  a  civil  engineer,  although 
it  seemed  to  me  that  he  had  been  acting  decidedly 
uncivil.  They  ventured  a  platitude  about  the  beau 
tiful  Indian  summer  weather  and  labored  out  a 
301 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

ponderous  joke  or  two  about  such  a  bad-tempered 
man  having  such  a  good-looking  wife — for  which 
I  despised  them  all.  But  I  could  see  that  even  if 
my  intrusion  had  put  the  soft  pedal  on  their  talk 
it  had  also  left  everything  uncomfortably  tentative 
and  non-committal.  For  some  reason  or  other  this 
was  a  man's  fight,  one  which  had  to  be  settled  in 
a  man's  way.  So  I  decided  to  retire  with  outward 
dignity  even  if  with  inward  embarrassment.  But 
I  resented  their  uncouth  commercial  gallantry  al 
most  as  much  as  I  abominated  their  trying  to  bully 
my  True  Love.  And  I  gave  them  one  Parthian 
shot  as  I  turned  away. 

"The  last  prize-fight  I  saw  was  in  a  sort  of 
souteneur's  cabaret  in  the  Avenue  des  Tilleuls,"  I 
sweetly  explained  to  them.  "But  that  was  nearly 
three  years  ago.  So  if  there  is  going  to  be  a  bout 
in  my  back  yard,  I  trust  you  gentlemen  will  be  so 
good  as  to  call  me !" 

And  smiling  up  into  their  somewhat  puzzled 
faces,  I  turned  on  my  heel  and  went  into  the  house. 
One  of  the  men  laughed  loud  and  deep,  at  this 
302 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

speech  of  mine,  and  a  couple  of  the  others  seemed 
to  sit  puzzling  over  it.  Yet  two  minutes  after  I 
was  inside  the  shack  that  most  uncivil  civil  engineer 
and  Dinky-Dunk  were  at  it  again.  Their  language 
was  more  than  I  should  care  to  repeat.  The  end 
of  it  was,  however,  that  the  six  dusty  pallbearers 
all  stepped  stiffly  down  out  of  their  car  and  Dinky- 
Dunk  shouted  for  Olie  and  Terry.  At  first  I 
thought  it  was  to  be  a  duel,  only  I  couldn't  make 
out  how  it  could  be  fought  with  a  post-hole  augur 
and  a  few  lengths  of  jointed  gaspipe,  for  this  was 
what  the  men  carried  away  with  them. 

Away  across  the  prairie  I  could  see  them  appar 
ently  engaged  in  the  silly  and  quite  profitless  occu 
pation  of  putting  down  a  post-hole  where  it  wasn't 
in  the  least  needed,  and  then  clustering  about  this 
hole  like  a  bunch  of  professorial  bigwigs  about 
a  new  specimen  on  a  microscope  slide.  Then  they 
moved  on  and  made  another  hole,  and  still  another, 
until  I  got  tired  of  watching  them.  It  was  two 
hours  later  before  they  came  back.  Their  voices 
now  seemed  more  facetious  and  there  was  more 
303 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

laughing  and  joking,  Dinky-Dunk  and  the  uncivil 
civil  engineer  being  the  only  quiet  ones.  And 
then  the  car  engine  purred  and  hummed  and  they 
climbed  heavily  in  and  lighted  cigars  and  waved 
hands  and  were  off  in  a  cloud  of  dust. 

But  Dinky-Dunk,  when  he  came  back  to  the 
shack  with  his  papers,  was  in  no  mood  for  talk 
ing.  And  I  knew  better  than  to  try  to  pump  him. 
To-night  he  came  in  early  for  supper  and  an 
nounced  that  he'd  have  to  leave  for  Winnipeg  right 
away  and  might  even  have  to  go  on  to  Ottawa. 
So  I  cooked  his  supper  and  packed  his  bag  and 
held  Babe  up  for  him  to  kiss  good-by.  But  still 
I  didn't  bother  him  with  questions,  for  I  was  afraid 
of  bad  news.  And  he  knew  that  I  knew  I  could 
trust  him. 

He  kissed  me  good-by  in  a  tragically  tender, 
or  rather  a  tenderly  tragic  sort  of  way,  which 
made  me  wonder  for  a  moment  if  he  was  possibly 
never  coming  back  again.  So  I  made  'em  all  waic 
rt'hile  I  took  one  extra,  for  good  measure,  in  case 
I  should  be  a  grass  widow  for  the  rest  of  my  days. 
304 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

To-night,  however,  I  sat  Terry  down  at  the  end 
of  the  table  and  third  degreed  him  to  the  queen's 
taste.  The  fight,  as  far  as  I  can  learn  from  this 
circuitous  young  Irishman,  is  all  about  a  right  of 
way  through  our  part  of  the  province.  Dinky- 
Dunk,  it  seems,  has  been  working  for  it  for  over 
a  year.  And  the  man  he  called  wicked  namos  had 
been  sent  out  by  the  officials  to  report  on  the  ter 
ritory.  My  husband  claims  he  was  bribed  by  the 
opposition  party  and  turned  in  a  report  saying 
our  district  was  without  water.  He  also  pro 
claimed  that  our  land — our  land,  mark  you  ! — was 
unvaryingly  poor  and  inferior  soil !  No  wonder 
my  Dinky-Dunk  had  stormed !  Then  Terry  rather 
disquieted  me  by  chortlingly  announcing  that  they 
had  put  one  over  on  the  whole  bunch.  For,  three 
days  before,  he'd  quietly  put  down  twenty  soil  and 
water-test  holes  and  carefully  filled  them  in  again. 
But  he'd  found  what  he  was  after.  And  that  lit 
tle  army  of  paid  knockers,  he  acknowledged,  hac 
been  steered  into  the  neighborhood  where  the  soil 
was  deepest  and  the  water  was  nearest.  And  thai 
305 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

soon  showed  who  the  liar  was,  for  of  course  every 
thing  came  out  as  Dinky-Dunk  wanted  it  to  come 
out! 

But  this  phase  of  it  I  didn't  discuss  with  Terry, 
for  I  had  no  desire  to  air  my  husband's  moral 
obliquities  before  his  hired  man.  Yet  I  am  still 
disturbed  by  what  I  have  heard.  Oh,  Dinky-Dunk, 
I  never  imagined  you  were  one  bit  sly,  even  ii 
business ' 


306 


Sunday  the  Eighteenth 

OLIE  and  Terry  seem  convinced  of  the  fact  that 
Dinky-Dunk's  farming  has  been  a  success.  We 
have  saved  all  our  wheat  crop,  and  it's  a  whopper. 
Terry,  with  his  crazy  Celtic  enthusiasms,  says  that 
by  next  year  they'll  be  calling  Dinky-Dunk  the 
Wheat  King  of  the  West.  Olga  and  Percy  went 
buggy  riding  this  afternoon.  I  wish  I  had  some 
sort  of  scales  to  weight  my  Snoozerette.  I  know 
he's  doubled  in  the  last  three  weeks. 


307 


Sunday  the  Twenty-fifth 

MT  DINKY-DUNK  is  home  again.  He  looks  e, 
little  tired  and  hollow-eyed,  but  when  the  Boy 
crowed  and  smiled  up  at  him  his  poor  tired  face 
softened  so  wonderfully  that  it  brought  the  tears 
to  my  eyes.  I  finally  persuaded  him  to  stop  pet 
ting  Babe  and  pay  a  little  attention  to  me.  After 
supper  he  opened  up  his  extra  hand-bag  and  hauled 
out  the  heaps  of  things  he'd  brought  Babe  and 
me.  Then  I  sat  on  his  knee  and  held  his  ears  and 
made  him  blow  away  the  smoke,  every  shred  of  it, 
•so  I  could  kiss  him  in  my  own  particular  places. 


308 


Tuesday  the  Twenty-seventh 

DINKY-DUNK  has  sailed  off  to  Buckhorn  to  dc 
some  telegraphing  he  should  have  done  Saturday 
night.  My  suspicions  about  his  slyness,  by  the 
way,  were  quite  unfounded.  It  was  the  guileless- 
eyed  Terry  who  led  those  railway  officials  out  to 
the  spot  where  he'd  already  secretly  tested  for 
water  and  found  signs  of  it.  And  Terry  can't 
even  understand  why  Dinky-Dunk  is  so  toweringly 
angry  about  it  all! 


309 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-eighth 

WHEN  Dinky-Dunk  came  in  last  night,  after 
his  drive  out  from  Buckhorn,  there  was  a  look  on 
his  face  that  rather  frightened  me.  I  backed  him 
up  against  the  door,  after  he'd  had  a  peep  at  the 
Boy,  and  said,  "Let  me  smell  your  breath,  sir!'5 
For  with  that  strange  light  in  his  eyes  I  surely 
thought  he'd  been  drinking.  "Lips  that  touch  liq 
uor,"  I  sang,  "shall  never  touch  mine!" 

But  I  was  mistaken.  And  Dinky-Dunk  only 
laughed  in  a  quiet  inward  rumbling  sort  of  way 
that  was  new  to  him.  "I  believe  I  am  drunk,  Boca 
Chica,"  he  solemnly  confessed,  "drunk  as  a  lord !" 
Then  he  took  both  my  hands  in  his. 

"D'you  know  what's  going  to  happen?"  he  de 
manded.  And  of  course  I  didn't.  Then  he  hurled 
it  point-blank  at  me. 

"The  railway's  going  to  come!" 

"Come  where?"  I  gasped. 
310 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

"Come  here,  right  across  our  land!  It's  settled. 
And  there's  no  mistake  about  it  this  time.  Inside 
of  ten  months  there'll  be  choo-choo  cars  steaming 

C? 

past  Casa  Grande !" 

"Skookum !"  I  shouted. 

"And  there'll  be  a  station  within  a  mile  of  where 
you  stand!  And  inside  of  two  years  this  seven 
teen  or  eighteen  hundred  acres  of  land  will  be  worth 
forty  dollars  an  acre,  easily,  and  perhaps  even  fifty. 
And  what  that  means  you  can  figure  out  for  your 
self!" 

"Whoopee!"  I  gasped,  trying  in  vain  to  figure 
out  how  much  forty  times  seventeen  hundred  was. 

But  that  was  not  all.  It  would  do  away  with 
the  road  haul  to  the  elevator,  which  might  have 
taken  most  of  the  profit  out  of  his  grain  growing. 
To  team  wheat  into  Buckhorn  would  have  been  a 
terrible  discount,  no  matter  what  luck  he  might 
have  with  his  crops.  So  he'd  been  moving  heaven 
and  earth  to  get  the  steel  to  come  his  way.  He'd 
pulled  wires  and  interviewed  members  and  guaran 
teed  a  water-tank  supply  and  promised  a  right  of 
31  •> 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

\vay  and  made  use  of  his  old  engineering  frienoa 
— until  his  battle  was  won.  And  his  last  fight 
had  been  against  the  liar  who'd  sent  in  false  reports 
about  his  district.  But  that  was  over  now,  anc 
Casa  Grande  will  no  longer  be  the  jumping-off 
place  of  civilization,  the  dot  on  the  wilderness. 
It  will  be  on  the  time-tables  and  the  mail-routes, 
and  I  know  my  Dinky-Dunk  will  be  the  first  mayoi 
of  the  new  city,  if  there  ever  is  a  city  to  be  mayc: 


Friday  the  Thirtieth 

DINKY-DUNK  came  in  at  noon  to-d<fy,  tiptoed 
over  to  the  crib  to  see  if  the  Boy  was  ail  right, 
and  then  came  and  put  his  hands  on  my  shoulders, 
looking  me  solemnly  in  the  eye:  "What  do  you 
suppose  has  happened?"  he  demanded. 

"Another  railroad,"  I  ventured. 

He  shook  his  head.  Of  course  it  was  useless 
for  me  to  try  to  guess.  I  pushed  my  finger  against 
Dinky-Dunk's  Adam's  apple  and  asked  him  -what 
the  news  was. 

"Percival  Benson  Woodhouse  has  just  calmly 
announced  to  me  that,  next  week,  Tie's  going  to 
marry  Olga"  was  my  husband's  answer. 

And  he  wondered  whv  I  smiled. 


313 


Sunday  the  First 

LITTLE  Dinky-Dink  is  fast  asleep  in  his  hand- 
carved  Scandinavian  cradle.  The  night  is  cool, 
so  we  have  a  fire  going.  Big  Dinky-Dunk,  who 
has  been  smoking  his  pipe,  is  sitting  on  one  side 
of  the  table,  and  I  am  sitting  on  the  other.  Be 
tween  us  lies  the  bundle  of  house-plans  which  have 
just  been  mailed  up  to  us  from  Philadelphia.  This 
is  the  second  night  we've  pored  over  them.  And 
we've  decided  what  we're  to  do  at  Casa  Grande. 
We're  to  have  a  telephone,  as  soon  as  the  railway 
gets  through,  and  a  wind-mill  and  running  water, 
and  a  new  barn  with  a  big  soft-water  tank  at  one 
end,  and  a  hot-water  furnace  in  the  new  house 
and  sleeping  porches  and  a  butler's  pantry  and 
a  laundry  chute — and  next  winter  in  California, 
if  Ave  want  it.  And  Dinky-Dunk  blames  himself 
for  never  having  had  brains  enough  to  plant  an 
avenue  or  .two  of  poplars  or  Manitoba  maples  about 
314 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

Casa  Grande,  for  now  we'll  have  to  wait  a  few 
years  for  foliage  and  shade.  And  he  intends  to 
have  a  playground  for  little  Dinky-Dink,  for  he 
agrees  with  me  that  our  boy  must  be  strong  and 
manly  and  muscular,  and  must  not  use  tobacco  in 
any  form  until  he  is  twenty  at  least.  And  Dinky- 
Dunk  has  also  agreed  that  I  shall  do  all  the  pun 
ishing — if  any  punishing  is  ever  necessary !  His 
father,  by  the  way,  has  just  announced  that  he 
wants  Babe  to  go  to  McGill  and  then  to  Oxford. 
But  I  have  been  insisting  on  Harvard,  and  I  shall 
be  firm  about  this. 

That  promised  to  bring  us  to  a  dead-lock,  so 
we  went  back  to  our  house-plans  again,  and  Dinky- 
Dunk  pointed  out  that  the  new  living-room  would 
be  bigger  than  all  our  present  shack  and  the  annex 
put  together.  And  that  caused  me  to  stare  about 
our  poor  little  cat-eyed  cubby-hole  of  a  wickyup 
and  for  the  first  time  realize  that  our  first  home 
was  to  be  wiped  off  the  map.  And  nothing  would 
ever  be  the  same  again,  and  even  the  prairie  over 
which  I  had  stared  in  my  joy  and  my  sorrow  would 
315 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

always  be  different !  A  lump  came  in  my  throat. 
And  when  Olga  came  in  and  I  handed  Dinky-Dink 
;o  her  she  could  see  that  my  lashes  were  wet.  But 
she  couldn't  understand. 

So  I  slipped  over  to  the  piano  and  uegan  to 
play.  Very  quietly  I  sang  through  Herman  Lohr's 
Irish  song  that  begins: 

In  the  dead  av  the  night,  acushla, 
When  the  new  big  house  is  still  .  .  . 

But  before  I  got  to  the  last  two  verses  I'm  afraid 
my  voice  was  rather  shaky. 

In  the  dead  av  the  year,  acushla, 
When  me  wide  new  fields  are  brown, 
I  think  av  a  wee  ould  house, 
At  the  edge  av  an  ould  gray  town ! 

I  think  av  the  rush-lit  faces, 
Where  the  room  and  loaf  was  small : 
But  the  new  years  seem  the  lean  years, 
And  the  ould  years,  best  av  all! 

Dinky-Dunk   came   and   stood   close  beside   me. 
"Has  my  Gee-Gee  a  big  sadness  in  her  little  prairie 
316 


THE    PRAIRIE    WIFE 

heart?"  he  asked  as  he  slipped  his  arms  about 
-ne.  But  I  was  sniffling  and  couldn't  answer  him. 
And  the  cling  of  his  blessed  big  arms  about  me 
only  seemed  to  make  everything  worse.  So  I  was 
bawling  openly  when  he  held  up  my  face  and  helped 
himself  to  what  must  have  been  a  terribly  briny 
kiss.  But  I  slipped  away  into  my  bedroom,  for 
I'm  not  one  of  those  apple-blossom  women  who  can 
weep  and  still  look  pretty.  And  for  two  blessed 
hours  I've  been  sitting  here,  Matilda  Anne,  won 
dering  if  our  new  life  will  be  as  happy  as  our  old 
life  was.  .  .  .  Those  old  days  are  over  and 
gone,  and  the  page  must  be  turned.  And  on  that 
last  page  I  was  about  to  write  "Tamdm  shud" 
But  kinglike  and  imperative  through  the  quietness 
of  Casa  Grande  I  hear  the  call  of  my  beloved  little 
tenor  robusto — and  if  it  is  the  voice  of  hunger  it  is 
also  the  voice  of  hope! 


THE 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


The  Prairie  Mother 

Sunday  the  Fifteenth 

I  OPENED  my  eyes  and  saw  a  pea-green  world  all 
around  me.  Then  I  heard  the  doctor  say:  "Give  'er 
another  whiff  or  two."  His  voice  sounded  far-away, 
as  though  he  were  speaking  through  the  Simplon 
Tunnel,  and  not  merely  through  his  teeth,  within 
twelve  inches  of  my  nose. 

I  took  my  whiff  or  two.  I  gulped  at  that  chloroform 
like  a  thirsty  Bedouin  at  a  wadi-spring.  I  went  down 
into  the  pea-green  emptiness  again,  and  forgot  about 
the  Kelly  pad  and  the  recurring  waves  of  pain  that 
came  bigger  and  bigger  and  tried  to  sweep  through 
my  racked  old  body  like  breakers  through  the  ribs  of 
a  stranded  schooner.  I  forgot  about  the  hateful  metal 
lic  clink  of  steel  things  against  an  instrument-tray, 
and  about  the  loganberry  pimple  on  the  nose  of  the 
red-headed  surgical  nurse  who'd  been  sent  into  the 
labor  room  to  help. 

I  went  wafting  off  into  a  feather-pillowy  pit  of  in 
finitude.  I  even  forgot  to  preach  to  myself,  as  I'd 
been  doing  for  the  last  month  or  two.  I  knew  that  my 
time  was  upon  me,  as  the  Good  Book  says.  There  are 

1 


£  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

a  lot  of  things  in  this  life,  I  remembered,  which  v,roman 
is  able  to  squirm  out  of.  But  here,  Mistress  Tabbie, 
was  one  you  couldn't  escape.  Here  was  a  situation 
that  had  to  be  faced.  Here  was  a  time  I  had  to  knuckle 
down,  had  to  grin  and  bear  it,  had  to  go  through  with 
it  to  the  bitter  end.  For  other  folks,  whatever  they 
may  be  able  to  do  for  you,  aren't  able  to  have  your 
babies  for  you. 

Then  I  ebbed  up  out  of  the  pea-green  depths  again, 
and  was  troubled  by  the  sound  of  voices,  so  thin  and 
far-away  I  couldn't  make  out  what  they  were  saying. 
Then  came  the  beating  of  a  tom-tom,  so  loud  that  it 
hurt.  When  that  died  away  for  a  minute  or  two  I 
caught  the  sound  of  the  sharp  and  quavery  squall  of 
something,  of  something  which  had  never  squalled  be 
fore,  a  squall  of  protest  and  injured  pride,  of  mal 
treated  youth  resenting  the  ignominious  way  it  must 
enter  the  world.  Then  the  tom-tom  beating  started  up 
again,  and  I  opened  my  eyes  to  make  sure  it  wasn't 
the  Grenadiers'  Band  going  by. 

I  saw  a  face  bending  over  mine,  seeming  to  float  in 
space.  It  was  the  color  of  a  half-grown  cucumber,  and 
it  made  me  think  of  a  tropical  fish  in  an  aquarium 
when  the  water  needed  changing. 

"She's  coming  out,  Doctor,"  I  heard  a  woman's 
voice  say.  It  was  a  voice  as  calm  as  God's  and  slightly 
nasal.  For  a  moment  I  thought  I'd  died  and  gone  to 
.Heaven.  But  I  finally  observed  and  identified  the  lo- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  3 

ganberry  pimple,  and  realized  that  the  tom-tom  beat 
ing  was  merely  the  pounding  of  the  steam-pipes  in  that 
jerry-built  western  hospital,  and  remembered  that  I 
was  still  in  the  land  of  the  living  and  that  the  red 
headed  surgical  nurse  was  holding  my  wrist.  I  felt  in 
finitely  hurt  and  abused,  and  wondered  why  my  hus 
band  wasn't  there  to  help  me  with  that  comforting 
brown  gaze  of  his.  And  I  wanted  to  cry,  but  didn't 
seem  to  have  the  strength,  and  then  I  wanted  to  say 
something,  but  found  myself  too  weak. 

It  was  the  doctor's  voice  that  roused  me  again.  He 
was  standing  beside  my  narrow  iron  bed  with  his 
sleeves  still  rolled  up,  wiping  his  arms  with  a  big  white 
towel.  He  was  smiling  as  he  scrubbed  at  the  corners 
of  his  nails,  as  though  to  make  sure  they  Avere  clean. 
The  nurse  on  the  other  side  of  the  bed  was  also  smil 
ing.  So  was  the  carrot-top  with  the  loganberry 
beauty-spot.  All  I  could  see,  in  fact,  was  smiling 
faces. 

But  it  didn't  seem  a  laughing  matter  to  me.  I 
wanted  to  rest,  to  sleep,  to  get  another  gulp  or  two  of 
that  God-given  smelly  stuff  out  of  the  little  round  tin 
can. 

"How're  you  feeling?"  asked  the  doctor  indiffer 
ently.  He  nodded  down  at  me  as  he  proceeded  to  man 
icure  those  precious  nails  of  his.  They  were  laughing, 
the  whole  four  of  them.  I  began  to  suspect  that  I 
wasn't  going  to  die,  after  all. 


4.  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Everything's  fine  and  dandy,"  announced  the 
barearmed  farrier  as  he  snapped  his  little  pen-knife 
shut.  But  that  triumphant  grin  of  his  only  made  me 
more  tired  than  ever,  and  I  turned  away  to  the  tall 
young  nurse  on  the  other  side  of  my  bed. 

There  was  perspiration  on  her  forehead,  under  the 
eaves  of  the  pale  hair  crowned  with  its  pointed  little 
cap.  She  was  still  smiling,  but  she  looked  human  and 
tired  and  a  little  fussed. 

"Is  it  a  girl?"  I  asked  her.  I  had  intended  to  make 
that  query  a  crushingly  imperious  one.  I  wanted  it  to 
stand  as  a  reproof  to  them,  as  a  mark  of  disapproval 
for  all  such  untimely  merriment.  But  my  voice,  I 
found,  was  amazingly  weak  and  thin.  And  I  wanted  to 
know. 

"It's  both,"  said  the  tired-eyed  girl  in  the  blue  and 
white  uniform.  And  she,  too,  nodded  her  head  in  a  tri 
umphant  sort  of  way,  as  though  the  credit  for  some 
vast  and  recent  victory  lay  entirely  in  her  own  narrow 
lap. 

"It's  both?"  I  repeated,  wondering  why  she  too 
should  fail  to  give  a  simple  answer  to  a  simple  quo? 
tion. 

"It's  twins !"  she  said,  with  a  little  chirrup  of  laug-b 
ter. 

"Twins  ?"  I  gasped,  in  a  sort  of  bleat  that  drove  the 
last  of  the  pea-green  mist  out  of  that  room  with  the 
dead  white  walls. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  5 

"Twins,"  proclaimed  the  doctor,  "twins!"  He  re 
peated  the  monosyllable,  converting  it  into  a  clarion- 
call  that  made  me  think  of  a  rooster  crowing. 

"A  lovely  boy  and  girl,"  cooed  the  third  nurse  with 
a  bottle  of  olive-oil  in  her  hand.  And  by  twisting  my 
head  a  little  I  was  able  to  see  the  two  wire  bassinets, 
side  by  side,  each  holding  a  little  mound  of  something 
wrapped  in  a  flannelette  blanket. 

I  shut  my  eyes,  for  I  seemed  to  have  a  great  deal 
to  think  over.  Twins!  A  boy  and  girl!  Two  little 
new  lives  in  the  world !  Two  warm  and  cuddling  little 
bairns  to  nest  close  against  my  mother-breast. 

"I  see  your  troubles  cut  out  for  you,"  said  the  doc 
tor  as  he  rolled  down  his  shirt-sleeves. 

They  were  all  laughing  again.  But  to  me  it  didn't 
seem  quite  such  a  laughing  matter.  I  was  thinking 
of  my  layette,  and  trying  to  count  over  my  supply  of 
binders  and  slips  and  shirts  and  nighties  and  wonder 
ing  how  I  could  out-Solomon  Solomon  and  divide 
the  little  dotted  Swiss  dress  edged  with  the  French 
Val  lace  of  which  I'd  been  so  proud.  Then  I  fell  to 
pondering  over  other  problems,  equally  prodigious,  so 
that  it  was  quite  a  long  time  before  my  mind  had  a 
chance  to  meander  on  to  Dinky-Dunk  himself. 

And  when  I  did  think  of  Dinky-Dunk  I  had  to 
laugh.  It  seemed  a  joke  on  him,  in  some  way.  He  was 
the  father  of  twins.  Instead  of  one  little  snoozer  to 
carry  on  his  name  and  perpetuate  his  race  in  the  land, 


6  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

he  now  had  two.  Fate,  without  consulting  him,  had 
flung  him  double  measure.  No  wonder,  for  the  mo 
ment,  those  midnight  toilers  in  that  white-walled  house 
of  pain  were  wearing  the  smile  that  refused  to  come 
off!  That's  the  way,  I  suppose,  that  all  life  ought  to 
be  welcomed  into  this  old  world  of  ours.  And  now,  I 
suddenly  remembered,  I  could  speak  of  my  children — 
and  that  means  so  much  more  than  talking  about  one's 
child.  Now  I  was  indeed  a  mother,  a  prairie  mother 
with  three  young  chicks  of  her  own  to  scratch  for. 

I  forgot  my  anxieties  and  my  months  of  waiting. 
I  forgot  those  weeks  of  long  mute  protest,  of  revolt 
against  wily  old  Nature,  who  so  cleverly  tricks  us 
into  the  ways  she  has  chosen.  A  glow  of  glory  went 
through  my  tired  body — it  was  hysteria,  I  suppose, 
in  the  basic  meaning  of  the  word — and  I  had  to  shut 
my  eyes  tight  to  keep  the  tears  from  showing. 

But  that  great  wave  of  happiness  which  had  washed 
up  the  shore  of  my  soul  receded  as  it  came.  By  the 
time  I  was  transferred  to  the  rubber-wheeled  stretcher 
they  called  "the  Wagon"  and  trundled  off  to  a  bed  and 
room  of  my  own,  the  reaction  set  in.  I  could  think 
more  clearly.  My  Dinky-Dunk  didn't  love  me,  or  he'd 
never  have  left  me  at  such  a  time,  no  matter  what  his 
business  calls  may  have  been.  The  Twins  weren't  quite 
so  humorous  as  they  seemed.  There  was  even  some 
thing  disturbingly  animal-like  in  the  birth  of  more 
offspring  than  one  at  a  time,  something  almost  re- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  7 

volting  in  this  approach  to  the  littering  of  one's 
young.  They  all  tried  to  unedge  that  animality  by 
treating  it  as  a  joke,  by  confronting  it  with  their  con 
spiracies  of  jocularity.  But  it  would  be  no  joke  to  a 
nursing  mother  in  the  middle  of  a  winter  prairie  with 
the  nearest  doctor  twenty  long  miles  away. 

I  countermanded  my  telegram  to  Dinky-Dunk  at 
Vancouver,  and  cried  myself  to  sleep  in  a  nice  relax 
ing  tempest  of  self-pity  which  my  "special"  accepted 
as  calmly  as  a  tulip-bed  accepts  a  shower.  But  lawdy, 
lawdy,  how  I  slept !  And  when  I  woke  up  and  sniffed 
warm  air  and  that  painty  smell  peculiar  to  new  build 
ings,  and  heard  the  radiators  sing  with  steam  and  the 
windows  rattle  in  the  northeast  blizzard  that  was  blow 
ing,  I  slipped  into  a  truer  realization  of  the  intricate 
machinery  of  protection  all  about  me,  and  thanked  my 
lucky  stars  that  I  wasn't  in  a  lonely  prairie  shack,  as 
I'd  been  when  my  almost  three-year-old  Dinkie  was 
born.  I  remembered,  with  little  tidal  waves  of  con 
tentment,  that  my  ordeal  was  a  thing  of  the  past,  and 
that  I  was  a  mother  twice  over,  and  rather  hungry, 
and  rather  impatient  to  get  a  peek  at  my  God- 
given  little  babes. 

Then  I  fell  to  thinking  rather  pityingly  of  my 
forsaken  little  Dinkie  and  wondering  if  Mrs.  Teetzei 
would  keep  his  feet  dry  and  cook  his  cream-of- wheat 
properly,  and  if  Iroquois  Annie  would  have  brains 
enough  not  to  overheat  the  furnace  and  burn  Casa 


8  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

Grande  down  to  the  ground.  Then  I  decided  to  send 
the  wire  to  Dinky-Dunk,  after  all,  for  it  isn't  every 
day  in  the  year  a  man  can  be  told  he's  the  father  of 
twins.  .  .  . 

I  sent  the  wire,  in  the  secret  hope  that  it  would 
bring  my  lord  and  mastei  on  the  run.  But  it  was  eight 
days  later,  when  I  was  up  on  a  back-rest  and  having 
my  hair  braided,  that  Dinky-Dunk  put  in  an  appear 
ance.  And  when  he  did  come  he  chilled  me.  I  can't 
just  say  why.  He  seemed  tired  and  preoccupied  and 
unnecessarily  self-conscious  before  the  nurses  when  I 
made  him  hold  Pee-Wee  on  one  arm  and  Poppsy  on  the 
other. 

"Now  kiss  'em,  Daddy,"  I  commanded.  And  he  had 
to  kiss  them  both  on  their  red  and  puckered  little 
faces.  Then  he  handed  them  over  with  all  too  appar 
ent  relief,  and  fell  into  a  brown  study. 

"What  are  you  worrying  over?"  I  asked. him. 

"I'm  wondering  how  in  the  world  you'll  ever  man 
age,"  he  solemnty  acknowledged.  I  was  able  to  laugh, 
though  it  took  an  effort. 

"For  every  little  foot  God  sends  a  little  shoe,"  I  told 
him,  remembering  the  aphorism  of  my  old  Irish  nurse. 
"And  the  sooner  you  get  me  home,  Dinky-Dunk,  the 
happier  I'll  be.  For  I'm  tired  of  this  place  and  the 
smell  of  the  formalin  and  ether  and  I'm  nearly  wor 
ried  to  death  about  Dinkie.  And  in  all  the  wide  world, 
O  Kaikobad,  there's  no  place  like  one's  own  home!" 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  9 

Dinky-Dunk  didn't  answer  me,  but  I  thought  he 
looked  a  little  wan  and  limp  as  he  sat  down  in  one  of 
the  stiff-backed  chairs.  I  inspected  him  with  a  calmer 
and  clearer  eye. 

"Was  that  sleeper  too  hot  last  night  ?"  I  asked,  re 
membering  what  a  bad  night  could  do  to  a  big  man. 

"I  don't  seem  to  sleep  on  a  train  the  way  I  used  to," 
he  said,  but  his  eye  evaded  mine.  And  I  suspected 
something. 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  demanded,  "did  you  have  a  berth 
last  night?" 

He  flushed  up  rather  guiltily.  He  even  seemed  to 
resent  my  questioning  him.  But  I  insisted  on  an  an 
swer. 

"No,  I  sat  up,"  he  finally  confessed. 

"Why?"  I  demanded. 

And  still  again  his  eye  tried  to  evade  mine. 

"We're  a  bit  short  of  ready  cash."  He  tried  to  say 
it  indifferently,  but  the  effort  was  a  failure. 

"Then  why  didn't  you  tell  me  that  before  ?"  I  asked, 
sitting  up  and  spurning  the  back-rest. 

"You  had  worries  enough  of  your  own,"  proclaimed 
my  weary-eyed  lord  and  master.  It  gave  me  a  squeezy 
feeling  about  the  heart  to  see  him  looking  so  much  like 
an  unkempt  and  overworked  and  altogether  neglected 
husband.  And  there  I'd  been  lying  in  the  lap  of  lux 
ury,  T,vith  quick-footed  ladies  in  uniform  to  answer  my 
bell  and  fly  at  my  bidding. 


10  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"But  I've  a  right,  Dunkie,  to  know  your  worries, 
and  stand  my  share  of  'em,"  I  promptly  told  him. 
"'And  that's  why  I  want  to  get  out  of  this  smelly  old 
hole  and  back  to  my  home  again.  I  may  be  the  mother 
of  twins,  and  only  too  often  reminded  that  I'm  one  of 
the  Mammalia,  but  I'm  still  your  cave-mate  and  life- 
partner,  and  I  don't  think  children  ought  to  come  be 
tween  a  man  and  wife.  I  don't  intend  to  allow  my 
children  to  do  anything  like  that." 

I  said  it  quite  bravely,  but  there  was  a  little  cloud 
of  doubt  drifting  across  the  sky  of  my  heart.  Mar 
riage  is  so  different  from  what  the  romance-fiddlers 
try  to  make  it.  Even  Dinky-Dunk  doesn't  approve  of 
my  mammalogical  allusions.  Yet  milk,  I  find,  is  one 
of  the  most  important  issues  of  motherhood — only  it's 
impolite  to  mention  the  fact.  What  makes  me  so  im 
patient  of  life  as  I  see  it  reflected  in  fiction  is  its  trick 
of  overlooking  the  important  things  and  over-accentu 
ating  the  trifles.  It  primps  and  tries  to  be  genteel — 
for  Biology  doth  make  cowards  of  us  all. 

I  was  going  to  say,  very  sagely,  that  life  isn't  so 
mysterious  after  you've  been  the  mother  of  three  chil 
dren.  But  that  wouldn't  be  quite  right.  It's  mysteri 
ous  in  an  entirely  different  way.  Even  love  itself  is 
different,  I  concluded,  after  lying  there  in  bed  day 
after  day  and  thinking  the  thing  over.  For  there  arc 
so  many  different  ways,  I  find,  of  loving  a  man.  You 
are  fond  of  him,  at  first,  for  what  you  consider  his 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  11 

perfections,  the  same  as  you  are  fond  of  a  brand-new 
traveling  bag.  There  isn't  a  scratch  on  his  polish  or 
a  flaw  in  his  make-up.  Then  you  live  with  him  for  a 
few  years.  You  live  with  him  and  find  that  life  is  mak 
ing  a  few  dents  in  his  loveliness  of  character,  that  the 
edges  are  worn  away,  that  there's  a  weakness  or  two 
where  you  imagined  only  strength  to  be,  and  that  in 
stead  of  standing  a  saint  and  hero  all  in  one,  he's 
merely  an  unruly  and  unreliable  human  being  with  his 
ups  and  downs  of  patience  and  temper  and  passion. 
But,  bless  his  battered  old  soul,  you  love  him  none  the 
less  for  all  that.  You  no  longer  fret  about  him  being 
unco  guid,  and  you  comfortably  give  up  trying  to 
match  his  imaginary  virtues  with  your  own.  You  still 
love  him,  but  you  love  him  differently.  There's  a  touch 
of  pity  in  your  respect  for  him,  a  mellowing  compas 
sion,  a  little  of  the  eternal  mother  mixed  up  with  the 
eternal  sweetheart.  And  if  you  are  wise  you  will  no 
longer  demand  the  impossible  of  him.  Being  a  woman, 
you  will  still  want  to  be  loved.  But  being  a  woman  of 
discernment,  you  will  remember  that  in  some  way  and 
by  some  means,  if  you  want  to  be  loved,  you  must  re 
main  lovable. 


Thursday  the  Nineteenth 

I  HAD  to  stay  in  that  smelly  old  hole  of  a  hospital 
and  in  that  bald  little  prairie  city  fully  a  week  longer 
than  I  wanted  to.  I  tried  to  rebel  against  being  bul 
lied,  even  though  the  hand  of  iron  was  padded  with 
velvet.  But  the  powers  that  be  were  too  used  to  han 
dling  perverse  and  fretful  women.  They  thwarted  my 
purpose  and  broke  my  will  and  kept  me  in  bed  until 
I  began  to  think  I'd  take  root  there. 

But  once  I  and  my  bairns  were  back  here  at  Casa 
Grande  I  could  see  that  they  were  right.  In  the  first 
place  the  trip  was  tiring,  too  tiring  to  rehearse  in  de 
tail.  Then  a  vague  feeling  of  neglect  and  desolation 
took  possession  of  me,  for  I  missed  the  cool-handed 
efficiency  of  that  ever-dependable  "special."  I  almost 
surrendered  to  funk,  in  fact,  when  both  Poppsy  and 
Pee- Wee  started  up  a  steady  duet  of  crying.  I  sat 
down  and  began  to  sniffle  myself,  but  iny  sense  of 
humor,  thank  the  Lord,  came  back  and  saved  the  day. 
There  was  something  so  utterly  ridiculous  in  that 
briny  circle,  soon  augmented  and  completed  by  the  ad 
dition  of  Dinkie,  who  apparently  felt  as  lonely  and 
overlooked  as  did  his  spineless  and  sniffling  mother. 

So  I  had  to  tighten  the  girths  of  my  soul.  I  took 
12 


a  fresh  grip  on  myself  and  said:  "Look  here,  Tabbie, 
this  is  never  going  to  do.  This  is  not  the  way  Hora- 
tius  held  the  bridge.  This  is  not  the  spirit  that  built 
Rome.  So,  up,  Guards,  and  at  'em!  Excelsior1. 
Audaces  fortuna  juvat!" 

So  I  mopped  my  eyes,  and  readjusted  the  Twins, 
and  did  what  I  could  to  placate  Dinkie,  who  continues 
to  regard  his  little  brother  and  sister  with  a  somewhat 
hostile  eye.  One  of  my  most  depressing  discoveries 
on  getting  back  home,  in  fact,  was  to  find  that  Dinkie 
has  grown  away  from  me  in  my  absence.  At  first  he 
even  resented  my  approaches,  and  he  still  stares  at  me, 
now  and  then,  across  a  gulf  of  perplexity.  But  the 
ice  is  melting.  He's  beginning  to  understand,  after 
all,  that  I'm  his  really  truly  mother  and  that  he  can 
come  to  me  with  his  troubles.  He's  lost  a  good  deal 
of  his  color,  and  I'm  beginning  to  suspect  that  his 
food  hasn't  been  properly  looked  after  during  the 
last  few  weeks.  It's  a  patent  fact,  at  any  rate,  that 
my  house  hasn't  been  properly  looked  after.  Iroquois 
Annie,  that  sullen-eyed  breed  servant  of  ours,  will 
never  have  any  medals  pinned  on  her  pinny  for  neat 
ness.  I'd  love  to  ship  her,  but  heaven  only  knows 
where  we'd  find  any  one  to  take  her  place.  And  I 
simply  must  have  help,  during  the  next  few  months. 

Casa  Grande,  by  the  way,  looked  such  a  little  dot 
on  the  wilderness,  as  we  drove  back  to  it,  that  a  spear 
of  terror  pushed  its  way  through  my  breast  as  I  real- 


14  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

ized  that  I  had  my  babies  to  bring  up  away  out  here 
on  the  edge  of  this  half-settled  no-man's  land.  If 
only  our  dreams  had  come  true !  If  only  the  plans  of 
mice  and  men  didn't  go  so  aft  agley !  If  only  the  rail 
way  had  come  through  to  link  us  up  with  civilization, 
and  the  once  promised  town  had  sprung  up  like  a 
mushroom-bed  about  our  still  sad  and  solitary  Casa 
Grande !  But  what's  the  use  of  repining,  Tabbie  Mc- 
Kail?  You've  the  second-best  house  within  thirty  miles 
of  Buckhorn,  with  glass  door-knobs  and  a  laundry- 
chute,  and  a  brood  to  rear,  and  a  hard-working  hus 
band  to  cook  for.  And  as  the  kiddies  get  older,  I  im 
agine,  I'll  not  be  troubled  by  this  terrible  feeling  of 
loneliness  which  has  been  weighing  like  a  plumb-bob 
on  my  heart  for  the  last  few  days.  I  wish  Dinky-Dunk 
didn't  have  to  be  so  much  away  from  home.  .  .  . 
Old  Whinstane  Sandy,  our  hired  man,  has  presented 
me  with  a  hand-made  swing-box  for  Poppsy  and  Pee- 
Wee,  a  sort  of  suspended  basket-bed  that  can  be  hung 
up  in  the  porch  as  soon  as  my  two  little  snoozers  are 
able  to  sleep  outdoors.  Old  Whinnie,  by  the  way,  was 
very  funny  when  I  showed  him  the  Twins.  He  sol 
emnly  acknowledged  that  they  were  nae  sae  bad,  con- 
seederin'.  I  suppose  he  thought  it  would  be  treason 
to  Dinkie  to  praise  the  newcomers  who  threatened  to 
put  little  Dinkie's  nose  out  of  joint.  And  Whinnie,  I 
imagine,  will  always  be  loyal  to  Dinkie.  He  says  little 
about  it,  but  I  know  he  loves  that  child.  He  loves  him 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  15 

in  very  much  the  same  way  that  Bobs,  our  collie  dog, 
loves  me.  It  was  really  Bobs'  welcome,  I  think,  across 
the  cold  prairie  air,  that  took  the  tragedy  out  of  my 
homecoming.  There  were  gladness  and  trust  in  those 
deep-throated  howls  of  greetings.  He  even  licked  the 
snow  off  my  overshoes  and  nested  his  head  between  my 
knees,  with  his  bob-tail  thumping  the  floor  like  a  flick 
er's  beak.  He  sniffed  at  the  Twins  rather  disgustedly. 
But  he'll  learn  to  love  them,  I  feel  sure,  as  time  gpes 
on.  He's  too  intelligent  a  dog  to  do  otherwise.  .  .  . 
I'll  be  glad  when  spring  comes,  and  takes  the  razor- 
edge  out  of  this  northern  air.  We'll  have  half  a  month 
of  mud  first,  I  suppose.  But  "there's  never  anything 
without  something,"  as  Mrs.  Teetzel  very  sagely  an 
nounced  the  other  day.  That  sour-apple  philosopher, 
by  the  way,  is  taking  her  departure  to-morrow.  And 
I'm  not  half  so  sorry  as  I  pretend  to  be.  She's  made 
me  feel  like  an  intruder  in  my  own  home.  And  she's 
a  soured  and  venomous  old  ignoramus,  for  she  sneered 
openly  at  my  bath-thermometer  and  defies  Poppsy  and 
Pee-Wee  to  survive  the  winter  without  a  "comfort." 
After  I'd  announced  my  intention  of  putting  them 
outdoors  to  sleep,  when  they  were  four  weeks  old,  she 
lugubriously  acknowledged  that  there  were  more  ways 
than  one  of  murderin'  infant  children.  Her  ideal  along 
this  line,  I've  discovered,  is  slow  asphyxiation  in  a  sort 
of  Dutch-oven  made  of  an  eider-down  comforter,  with 
as  much  air  as  possible  shut  off  from  their  uncomfort- 


16  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

able  little  bodies.  But  the  Oracle  is  going,  and  I  intend 
to  bring  up  my  babies  in  my  own  way.  For  I  know  a 
little  more  about  the  game  now  than  I  did  when  little 
Dinkie  made  his  appearance  in  this  vale  of  tears.  And 
whatever  my  babies  may  or  may  not  be,  they  are  at 
least  healthy  little  tikes. 


Sunday  the  Twenty-second 

I  SEEM  to  be  fitting  into  things  again,  here  at  Casa 
Grande.  I've  got  my  strength  back,  and  an  appetite 
like  a  Cree  pony,  and  the  day's  work  is  no  longer  a 
terror  to  me.  I'm  back  in  the  same  old  rut,  I  was  go 
ing  to  say — but  it  is  not  the  same.  There  is  a  spirit 
of  unsettledness  about  it  all  which  I  find  impossible  to 
define,  an  air  of  something  impending,  of  something 
that  should  be  shunned  as  long  as  possible.  Perhaps 
it's  merely  a  flare-back  from  my  own  shaken  nerves. 
Or  perhaps  it's  because  I  haven't  been  able  to  get  out 
in  the  open  air  as  much  as  I  used  to.  I  am  missing  my 
riding.  And  Paddy,  my  pinto,  will  give  us  a  morning 
of  it,  when  we  try  to  get  a  saddle  on  his  scarred  little 
back,  for  it's  half  a  year  now  since  he  has  had  a  bit 
between  his  teeth. 

It's  Dinky-Dunk  that  I'm  really  worrying  over, 
though  I  don't  know  why.  I  heard  him  come  in  very 
quietly  last  night  as  I  was  tucking  little  Dinkie  up  in 
his  crib.  I  went  to  the  nursery  door,  half  hoping  to 
hear  my  lord  and  master  sing  out  his  old-time  "Hello, 
Lady -Bird!"  or  "Are  you  there,  Babushka?"  But  in 
stead  of  that  he  climbed  the  stairs,  rather  heavily,  and 
passed  on  down  the  hall  to  the  little  room  he  calls  his 

17 


18  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

study,  his  sanctum-sanctorum  where  he  keeps  his  desk 
and  papers  and  books — and  the  duck-guns,  so  that 
Dinkie  can't  get  at  them.  I  could  hear  him  open  the 
desk-top  and  sit  down  in  the  squeaky  Bank  of  Eng 
land  chair. 

When  I  was  sure  that  Dinkie  was  off,  for  good,  I 
tiptoed  out  and  shut  the  nursery  door.  Even  big 
houses,  I  began  to  realize  as  I  stood  there  in  the  hall, 
could  have  their  drawbacks.  In  the  two-by-four  shack 
where  we'd  lived  and  worked  and  been  happy  before 
Casa  Grande  was  built  there  was  no  chance  for  one's 
husband  to  shut  himself  up  in  his  private  boudoir  and 
barricade  himself  away  from  his  better-half.  So  I  de 
cided,  all  of  a  sudden,  to  beard  the  lion  in  his  den. 
There  was  such  a  thing  as  too  much  formality  in  a 
family  circle.  Yet  I  felt  a  bit  audacious  as  I  quietly 
pushed  open  that  study  door.  I  even  weakened  in  my 
decision  about  pouncing  on  Dinky-Dunk  from  behind, 
like  a  leopardess  on  a  helpless  stag.  Something  in  his 
pose,  in  fact,  brought  me  up  short. 

Dinky-Dunk  was  sitting  with  his  head  on  his  hand, 
staring  at  the  wall-paper.  And  it  wasn't  especially  in 
teresting  wall-paper.  He  was  sitting  there  in  a  trance, 
with  a  peculiar  line  of  dejection  about  his  forward- 
fallen  shoulders.  I  couldn't  see  his  face,  but  I  felt  sure 
it  was  not  a  happy  face. 

I  even  came  to  a  stop,  without  speaking  a  word,  and 
shrank  rather  guiltily  back  through  the  doorway.  It 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  19 

was  a  relief,  in  fact,  to  find  that  I  was  able  to  close  the 
door  without  making  a  sound. 

When  Dinky-Dunk  came  down-stairs,  half  an 
hour  later,  he  seemed  his  same  old  self.  He  talked  and 
laughed  and  inquired  if  Nip  and  Tuck — those  are  the 
names  he  sometimes  takes  from  his  team  and  pins  on 
Poppsy  and  Fee-Wee — had  given  me  a  hard  day  of 
it  and  explained  that  Francois — our  man  on  the  Har 
ris  Ranch — had  sent  down  a  robe  of  plaited  rabbit- 
skin  for  them. 

I  did  my  best,  all  the  time,  to  keep  my  inquisitorial 
eye  from  fastening  itself  on  Dunkie's  face,  for  I  knew 
that  he  was  playing  up  to  me,  that  he  was  acting  a 
part  which  wasn't  coming  any  too  easy.  But  he  stuck 
to  his  role.  When  I  put  down  my  sewing,  because  my 
eyes  were  tired,  he  even  inquired  if  I  hadn't  done 
about  enough  for  one  day. 

"I've  done  about  half  what  I  ought  to  do,"  I  told 
him.  "The  trouble  is,  Dinky-Dunk,  I'm  getting  old. 
I'm  losing  my  bounce !" 

That  made  him  laugh  a  little,  though  it  was  rather 
a  wistful  laugh. 

"Oh,  no,  Gee-Gee,"  he  announced,  momentarily  like 
his  old  self,  "whatever  you  lose,  you'll  never  lose  that 
undying  girlishness  of  yours !" 

It  was  not  so  much  what  he  said,  as  the  mere  fact 
that  he  could  say  it,  which  sent  a  wave  of  happiness 
through  my  maternal  old  body.  So  I  made  for  him  with 


20  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

my  Australian  crawl-stroke,  and  kissed  him  on  both 
sides  of  his  stubbly  old  face,  and  rumpled  him  up,  and 
went  to  bed  with  a  touch  of  silver  about  the  edges  of 
the  thunder-cloud  still  hanging  away  off  somewhere  on 
the  skv-line. 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-fifth 

THERE  was  Indeed  something  wrong.  I  knew  that 
the  moment  I  heard  Dinky-Dunk  come  into  the  house. 
I  knew  it  by  the  way  he  let  the  storm-door  swing  shut, 
by  the  way  he  crossed  the  hall  as  far  as  the  living- 
room  door  and  then  turned  back,  by  the  way  he  slowly 
mounted  the  stairs  and  passed  leaden-footed  on  to  his 
study.  And  I  knew  that  this  time  there'd  be  no  "Are 
you  there,  Little  Mother?"  or  "Where  beest  thou, 
Boca  Chica?" 

I'd  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  safe  and  sounc  asleep  in 
the  swing-box  that  dour  old  Whinstane  Sa>.dy  had 
manufactured  out  of  a  packing-case,  with  Francois* 
robe  of  plaited  rabbit-skin  to  keep  their  tootsies  warm. 
I'd  finished  my  ironing  and  bathed  little  Dinkie  and 
buttoned  him  up  in  his  sleepers  and  made  him  hold 
his  little  hands  together  while  I  said  his  "Now-I-lay- 
me"  and  tucked  him  up  in  his  crib  with  his  broken 
mouth-organ  and  his  beloved  red-topped  shoes  under 
the  pillow,  so  that  he  could  find  them  there  first  thing 
in  the  morning  and  bestow  on  them  his  customary 
matutinal  kiss  of  adoration.  And  I  was  standing  at 
the  nursery  window,  pretty  tired  in  body  but  foolishly 

21 


22  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

happy  and  serene  in  spirit,  staring  out  across  the 
leagues  of  open  prairie  at  the  last  of  the  sunset. 

It  was  one  of  those  wonderful  sunsets  of  the  winter- 
end  that  throw  wine-stains  back  across  this  bald  old 
earth  and  make  you  remember  that  although  the  green 
hasn't  yet  awakened  into  life  there's  release  on  the 
way.  It  was  a  sunset  with  an  infinite  depth  to  its  opal 
and  gold  and  rose  and  a  whisper  of  spring  in  its  softly 
prolonged  afterglow.  It  made  me  glad  and  sad  all  at 
once,  for  while  there  was  a  hint  of  vast  re-awakenings 
in  the  riotous  wine-glow  that  merged  off  into  pale 
green  to  the  north,  there  was  also  a  touch  of  loneliness 
in  the  flat  and  far-flung  sky-line.  It  seemed  to  recede 
so  bewilderingly  and  so  oppressively  into  a  silence  and 
into  an  emptiness  which  the  lonely  plume  of  smoke 
from  one  lonely  shack-chimney  both  crowned  and  ac 
centuated  with  a  wordless  touch  of  poignancy. 

That  pennon  of  shack-smoke,  dotting  the  northern 
horizon,  seemed  to  become  something  valorous  and  fine. 
It  seemed  to  me  to  typify  the  spirit  of  man  pioneering 
along  the  fringes  of  desolation,  adventuring  into  the 
unknown,  conquering  the  untamed  realms  of  his  world. 
And  it  was  a  good  old  world,  I  suddenly  felt,  a  patient 
and  bountiful  old  world  with  its  Browningesque  old 
bones  set  out  in  the  last  of  the  sun — until  I  heard  my 
Dinky-Dunk  go  lumbering  up  to  his  study  and  quietly 
yet  deliberately  shut  himself  in,  as  I  gave  one  last  look 
at  Poppsy  and  Pee- Wee  to  make  sure  they  were  safely 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  23 

covered.  Then  I  stood  stock-still  in  the  center  of  the 
nursery,  wondering  whether,  at  such  a  time,  I  ought  to 
go  to  my  husband  or  keep  away  from  him. 

I  decided,  after  a  minute  or  two  of  thought,  to 
bide  a  wee.  So  I  slipped  quietly  down-stairs  and 
stowed  Dinkie's  overturned  kiddie-car  away  in  the 
cloak-room  and  warned  Iroquois  Annie — the  meekest- 
looking  Redskin  ever  togged  out  in  the  cap  and  apron 
of  domestic  servitude — not  to  burn  my  fricassee  of 
frozen  prairie-chicken  and  not  to  scorch  the  scones  so 
beloved  by  my  Scotch-Canadian  lord  and  master. 
Then  I  inspected  the  supper  table  and  lighted  the 
lamp  with  the  Ruskin-green  shade  and  supplanted 
Dinky-Dunk's  napkin  that  had  a  coffee-stain  along  its 
edge  with  a  fresh  one  from  the  linen-drawer.  Then, 
after  airing  the  house  to  rid  it  of  the  fumes  from 
Iroquois  Annie's  intemperate  griddle  and  carrying 
Dinkie's  muddied  overshoes  back  to  the  kitchen  and 
lighting  the  Chinese  hall-lamp,  I  went  to  the  bottom 
of  the  stairs  to  call  my  husband  down  to  supper. 

But  still  again  that  wordless  feeling  of  something 
amiss  prompted  me  to  hesitate.  So  instead  of  calling 
blithely  out  of  him,  as  I  had  intended,  I  went  silently 
up  the  stairs.  Then  I  slipped  along  the  hall  and  just 
*s  silently  opened  his  study  door. 

My  husband  was  sitting  at  his  desk,  confronted  by 
3.  litter  of  papers  and  letters,  which  I  knew  to  be  the 
mail  he  had  just  brought  home  and  flung  there.  But 


he  wasn't  looking  at  anything  on  his  desk.  He  was 
merely  sitting  there  staring  vacantly  out  of  the  win 
dow  at  the  paling  light.  His  elbows  were  on  the  arms 
of  his  Bank  of  England  swivel-chair  for  which  I'd 
made  the  green  baize  seat-pad,  and  as  I  stared  in  at 
him,  half  in  shadow,  I  had  an  odd  impression  of  his 
tory  repeating  itself.  This  puzzled  me,  for  a  moment, 
until  I  remembered  having  caught  sight  of  him  in 
much  the  same  attitude,  only  a  few  days  before.  But 
this  time  he  looked  so  tired  and  drawn  and  spineless 
that  a  fish-hook  of  sudden  pity  tugged  at  my  throat. 
For  my  Dinky-Dunk  sat  there  without  moving,  with 
the  hope  and  the  joy  of  life  drawn  utterly  out  of  his 
bony  big  body.  The  heavy  emptiness  of  his  face,  as 
rugged  as  a  relief -map  in  the  side-light,  even  made  me 
forget  the  smell  of  the  scones  Iroquois  Annie  was  vin 
dictively  scorching  down  in  the  kitchen.  He  didn't 
know,  of  course,  that  I  was  watching  him,  for  he 
jumped  as  I  signaled  my  presence  by  slamming  the 
door  after  stepping  in  through  it.  That  jump,  I 
knew,  wasn't  altogether  due  to  edgy  nerves.  It  was 
also  an  effort  at  dissimulation,  for  his  sudden  struggle 
to  get  his  scattered  lines  of  manhood  together  still 
carried  a  touch  of  the  heroic.  But  I'd  caught  a  glimpse 
of  his  soul  when  it  wasn't  on  parade.  And  I  knew 
what  I  knew.  He  tried  to  work  his  poor  old  harried 
face  into  a  smile  as  I  crossed  over  to  his  side.  But, 
like  Topsy's  kindred,  it  died  a-borning. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  25 

"What's  happened?"  I  asked,  dropping  on  ray 
knees  close  beside  him. 

Instead  of  answering  me,  he  swung  about  in  the 
swivel-chair  so  that  he  more  directly  faced  the  win 
dow.  The  movement  also  served  to  puD  away  the  hand 
which  I  had  almost  succeeded  in  capturing.  Nothing, 
I've  found,  can  wound  a  real  man  more  than  pity. 

"What's  happened?"  I  repeated.  For  I  knew,  now, 
that  something  was  really  and  truly  and  tragically 
wrong,  as  plainly  as  though  Dinky-Dunk  had  up  and 
told  me  so  by  word  of  mouth.  You  can't  live  with  a 
man  for  nearly  four  years  without  growing  into  a 
sort  of  clairvoyant  knowledge  of  those  subterranean 
little  currents  that  feed  the  wells  of  mood  and  temper 
and  character.  He  pushed  the  papers  on  the  desk 
away  from  him  without  looking  at  me. 

"Oh,  it's  nothing  much,"  he  said.  But  he  said  it 
so  listlessly  I  knew  he  was  merely  trying  to  lie  like  a 
gentleman. 

"If  it's  bad  news,  I  want  to  know  it,  right  slam- 
bang  out,"  I  told  him.  And  for  the  first  time  he 
turned  and  looked  at  me,  in  a  meditative  and  imper 
sonal  sort  of  way  that  brought  the  fish-hook  tugging 
at  my  thorax  again.  He  looked  at  me  as  though  some 
inner  part  of  him  were  still  debating  as  tc  whether  or 
not  he  was  about  to  be  confronted  by  a  woman  in 
tears.  Then  a  touch  of  cool  desperation  crept  up  into 
his  eyes. 


26  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Our  whole  apple-cart's  gone  over,"  he  slowly  and 
quietly  announced,  with  those  coldly  narrowed  eyes 
still  intent  on  my  face,  as  though  very  little  and  yet 
a  very  great  deal  depended  on  just  how  I  was  going  to 
accept  that  slightly  enigmatic  remark.  And  he  must 
have  noticed  the  quick  frown  of  perplexity  which 
probably  came  to  my  face,  for  that  right  hand  of  his 
resting  on  the  table  opened  and  then  closed  again,  as 
though  it  were  squeezing  a  sponge  very  dry.  "They've 
got  me,"  he  said.  "They've  got  me — to  the  last  dol 
lar  !" 

I  stood  up  in  the  uncertain  light,  for  it  takes  time 
to  digest  strong  words,  the  same  as  it  takes  time  to  di 
gest  strong  meat. 

I  remembered  how,  during  the  last  half-year, 
Dinky-Dunk  had  been  on  the  wing,  hurrying  over  to 
Calgary,  and  Edmonton,  flying  east  to  Winnipeg, 
scurrying  off  to  the  Coast,  poring  over  township  maps 
and  blue-prints  and  official-looking  letters  from  land 
associations  and  banks  and  loan  companies.  I  had  been 
called  in  to  sign  papers,  with  bread-dough  on  my 
arms,  and  asked  to  witness  signatures,  with  Dinkie  on 
my  hip,  and  commanded  by  my  absent  hearth-mate 
to  send  on  certain  documents  by  the  next  mail.  I  had 
also  gathered  up  scattered  sheets  of  paper  covered  with 
close-penciled  rows  of  figures,  and  had  felt  that 
Dinky-Dunk  for  a  year  back  had  been  giving  more 
time  to  his  speculations  than  to  his  home  and  his  ranch. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  27 

I  had  seen  the  lines  deepen  a  little  on  that  lean  and 
bony  face  of  his  and  the  pepper-and-salt  above  his 
ears  turning  into  almost  pure  salt.  And  I'd  missed,  this 
many  a  day,  the  old  boyish  note  in  his  laughter  and 
the  old  careless  intimacies  in  his  talk.  And  being  a 
woman  of  almost  ordinary  intelligence — preoccupied 
as  I  was  with  those  three  precious  babies  of  mine — I 
had  arrived  at  the  not  unnatural  conclusion  that  my 
spouse  was  surrendering  more  and  more  to  that  pas 
sion  of  his  for  wealth  and  power. 

Wealth  and  power,  of  course,  are  big  words  in  the 
language  of  any  man.  But  I  had  more  than  an  inkling 
that  my  husband  had  been  taking  a  gambler's  chance 
to  reach  the  end  in  view.  And  now,  in  that  twilit 
shadow-huddled  cubby-hole  of  a  room,  it  came  over  me, 
all  of  a  heap,  that  having  taken  the  gambler's  chance, 
we  had  met  a  fate  not  uncommon  to  gamblers,  and  had 
lost. 

"So  we're  bust!"  I  remarked,  without  any  great 
show  of  emotion,  feeling,  I  suppose,  that  without 
worldly  goods  we  might  consistently  be  without  ele 
gance.  And  in  the  back  of  my  brain  I  was  silently  re 
vising  our  old  Kansas  pioneer  couplet  into 

In  land-booms  we  trusted 
And  in  land-booms  we  busted. 

But  it  wasn't  a  joke.  You  can't  have  the  bottom 
knocked  out  of  your  world,  naturally,  and  find  an  in- 


visible  Nero  blithely  fiddling  on  your  heart-strings. 
And  I  hated  to  see  Dinky-Dunk  sitting  there  with  that 
dead  look  in  his  eyes.  I  hated  to  see  him  with  his 
spirit  broken,  with  that  hollow  and  haggard  misery 
about  the  jowls,  which  made  me  think  of  a  hound- 
dog  mourning  for  a  dead  master. 

But  I  knew  better  than  to  show  any  pity  for  Dinky- 
Dunk  at  such  a  time.  It  would  have  been  effective  as 
a  stage-picture,  I  know,  my  reaching  out  and  pressing 
his  tired  head  against  a  breast  sobbing  with  compre 
hension  and  shaking  with  compassion.  But  pity,  with 
real  men-folks  in  real  life,  is  perilous  stuif  to  deal  in. 
I  was  equally  afraid  to  feel  sorry  for  myself,  even 
though  my  body  chilled  with  the  sudden  suspicion  that 
Casa  Grande  and  all  it  held  might  be  taken  away  from 
me,  that  my  bairns  might  be  turned  out  of  their  warm 
and  comfortable  beds,  overnight,  that  the  consoling 
sense  of  security  which  those  years  of  labor  had 
builded  up  about  us  might  vanish  in  a  breath.  And  I 
needed  new  flannelette  for  the  Twins'  nighties,  and  a 
reefer  for  little  Dinky-Dunk,  and  an  aluminum 
double-boiler  that  didn't  leak  for  me  maun's  porritch. 
There  were  rafts  of  things  I  needed,  rafts  and  rafts  of 
them.  But  here  we  were  bust,  so  far  as  I  could  tell,  on 
the  rocks,  swamped,  stranded  and  wrecked. 

I  held  myself  in,  however,  even  if  it  did  take  an 
effort.  I  crossed  casually  over  to  the  door,  and  opened 
it  to  sniff  at  the  smell  of  supper. 


"Whatever  happens,  Dinky-Dunk,"  I  very  calmly 
announced,  "we've  got  to  eat.  And  if  that  she-Indian 
scorches  another  scone  I'll  go  down  there  and  scalp 
her." 

My  husband  got  slowly  and  heavily  up  out  of  the 
chair,  which  gave  out  a  squeak  or  two  even  when  re 
lieved  of  his  weight.  I  knew  by  his  face  in  the  half- 
light  that  he  was  going  to  say  that  he  didn't  care  to 
eat. 

But,  instead  of  saying  that,  he  stood  looking  at  me, 
with  a  tragically  humble  sort  of  contriteness.  Then, 
without  quite  knowing  he  was  doing  it,  he  brought  his 
hands  together  in  a  sort  of  clinch,  with  his  face  twisted 
up  in  an  odd  little  grimace  of  revolt,  as  though  he 
stood  ashamed  to  let  me  see  that  his  lip  was  quivering. 

"It's  such  a  rotten  deal,"  he  almost  moaned,  "to 
you  and  the  kiddies." 

"Oh,  we'll  survive  it,"  I  said  with  a  grin  that  was 
plainly  forced. 

"But  you  don't  seem  to  understand  what  it  means," 
he  protested.  His  impatience,  I  could  see,  was  simply 
that  of  a  man  overtaxed.  And  I  could  afford  to 
make  allowance  for  it. 

"I  understand  that  it's  almost  an  hour  past  supper- 
time,  my  Lord,  and  that  if  you  don't  give  me  a  chance 
to  stoke  up  I'll  bite  the  edges  off  the  lamp-shade !" 

I  was  rewarded  by  just  the  ghost  of  a  smile,  a 
smile  that  was  much  too  wan  and  sickly  to  live  long. 


30  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"All  right,"  announced  Dinky-Dunk,  "I'll  be 
down  in  a  minute  or  two." 

There  was  courage  in  that,  I  saw,  for  all  the  list- 
lessness  of  the  tone  in  which  it  had  been  uttered.  So  I 
went  skipping  down-stairs  and  closed  my  baby  grand 
and  inspected  the  table  and  twisted  the  glass  bowl  that 
held  my  nasturtium-buds  about,  to  the  end  that  the 
telltale  word  of  "Salt"  embossed  on  its  side  would  not 
betray  the  fact  that  it  had  been  commandeered  from 
the  kitchen-cabinet.  Then  I  turned  up  the  lamp  and 
smilingly  waited  until  my  lord  and  master  seated  him 
self  at  the  other  side  of  the  table,  grateful  beyond 
words  that  we  had  at  least  that  evening  alone  and 
were  not  compelled  to  act  up  to  a  part  before  the  eyes 
of  strangers. 

Yet  it  was  anything  but  a  successful  meal.  Dinky- 
Dunk's  pretense  at  eating  was  about  as  hollow  as  my 
pretense  at  light-heartedness.  We  each  knew  that  the 
other  was  playing  a  part,  and  the  time  came  when  to 
keep  it  up  was  altogether  too  much  of  a  mockery. 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  said  after  a  silence  that  was  too 
abysmal  to  be  ignored,  "let's  look  this  thing  squarely 
in  the  face." 

"I  can't!" 

"Why  not?" 

"I  haven't  the  courage." 

"Then  we've  got  to  get  it,"  I  insisted.  "I'm  ready  to 
face  the  music,  if  you  are.  So  let's  get  right  down  to 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  31 

hard-pan.  Have  they — have  they  really  cleaned  you 
out?" 

"To  the  last  dollar,"  he  replied,  without  looking  up. 

"What  did  it?"  I  asked,  remaining  stubbornly  and 
persistently  ox-like  in  my  placidity. 

"No  one  thing  did  it,  Chaddie,  except  that  I  tried 
to  bite  off  too  much.  And  for  the  last  two  years,  of 
course,  the  boom's  been  flattening  out.  If  our  Asso 
ciated  Land  Corporation  hadn't  gone  under — " 

"Then  it  has  gone  under?"  I  interrupted,  with  a 
catch  of  the  breath,  for  I  knew  just  how  much  had 
been  staked  on  that  venture. 

Dinky-Dunk  nodded  his  head.  "And  carried  me 
with  it,"  he  grimly  announced.  "But  even  that 
wouldn't  have  meant  a  knock-out,  if  the  government 
had  only  kept  its  promise  and  taken  over  my  Van 
couver  Island  water-front." 

That,  I  remembered,  was  to  have  been  some  sort  of 
a  shipyard.  Then  I  remembered  something  else. 

"When  the  Twins  were  born,"  I  reminded  Dunkie, 
"you  put  the  ranch  here  at  Casa  Grande  in  my  name. 
Does  that  mean  we  lose  our  home  ?" 

I  was  able  to  speak  quietly,  but  I  could  hear  the 
thud  of  my  own  heart-beats. 

"That's  for  you  to  decide,"  he  none  too  happily  ac 
knowledged.  Then  he  added,  with  sudden  decisiveness : 
"No,  they  can't  touch  anything  of  yours!  Not  a 
thing!" 


32  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"But  won't  that  hold  good  with  the  Harris  Ranch, 
as  well?"  I  further  inquired.  "That  was  actually 
bought  in  my  name.  It  was  deeded  to  me  from  the 
first,  and  always  has  been  in  my  name." 

"Of  course  it's  yours,"  he  said  with  a  hesitation 
that  was  slightly  puzzling  to  me. 

"Then  how  about  the  cattle  and  things?" 

"What  cattle?" 

"The  cattle  we've  kept  on  it  to  escape  the  wild 
land  tax?  Aren't  those  all  legally  mine?" 

It  sounded  rapacious,  I  suppose,  under  the  circum 
stances.  It  must  have  seemed  like  looting  on  a  battle 
field.  But  I  wasn't  thinking  entirely  about  myself, 
even  though  poor  old  Dinky-Dunk  evidently  assumed 
so,  from  the  look  of  sudden  questioning  that  came  into 
his  stricken  eyes. 

"Yes,  they're  yours,"  he  almost  listlessly  responded. 

"Then,  as  I've  already  said,  let's  look  this  thing 
fairly  and  squarely  in  the  face.  We've  taken  a  gam 
bler's  chance  on  a  big  thing,  and  we've  lost.  We've 
lost  our  pile,  as  they  phrase  it  out  here,  but  if  what 
you  say  is  true,  we  haven't  lost  our  home,  and  what  is 
still  more  important,  we  haven't  lost  our  pride." 

My  husband  looked  down  at  his  plate. 

"That's  gone,  too,"  he  slowly  admitted. 

"It  doesn't  sound  like  my  Dinky-Dunk,  a  thing  like 
that,"  I  promptly  admonished.  But  I'd  spoken  before 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  33 

I  caught  sight  of  the  tragic  look  in  his  eyes  as  he  once 
more  looked  up  at  me. 

"If  those  politicians  had  only  kept  their  word,  we'd 
have  had  our  shipyard  deal  to  save  us,"  he  said,  mor~ 
to  himself  than  to  me.  Yet  that,  I  knew,  was  more  ar 
excuse  than  a  reason. 

"And  if  the  rabbit-dog  hadn't  stopped  to  scratch, 
he  might  have  caught  the  hare!"  I  none  too  merci 
fully  quoted.  My  husband's  face  hardened  as  he  sat 
staring  across  the  table  at  me. 

"I'm  glad  you  can  take  it  lightly  enough  to  joke 
over,"  he  remarked,  as  he  got  up  from  his  chair. 
There  was  a  ponderous  sort  of  bitterness  in  his  voice, 
a  bitterness  that  brought  me  up  short.  I  had  to  fight 
back  the  surge  of  pity  which  was  threatening  to 
strangle  my  voice,  pity  for  a  man,  once  so  proud  of  his 
power,  standing  stripped  and  naked  in  his  weakness. 

"Heaven  knows  I  don't  want  to  joke,  Honey-Chile," 
I  told  him.  "But  we're  not  the  first  of  these  wild-cat 
ting  westerners  who've  come  a  cropper.  And  since  we 
haven't  robbed  a  bank,  or — " 

"It's  just  a  little  worse  than  that,"  cut  in  Dinky- 
Dunk,  meeting  my  astonished  gaze  with  a  sort  of  Job- 
like  exultation  in  his  own  misery.  I  promptly  asked 
him  what  he  meant.  He  sat  down  again,  before  speak 
ing. 

"I  mean  that  I've  lost  Allie's  money  along  with  my 


34  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

own,"  he  very  slowly  and  distinctly  said  to  me.  And 
we  sat  there,  staring  at  each  other,  for  all  the  world 
like  a  couple  of  penguins  on  a  sub- Arctic  shingle. 

Allie,  I  remembered,  was  Dinky-Dunk's  English 
cousin,  Lady  Alicia  Elizabeth  Newland,  who'd  made 
the  Channel  flight  in  a  navy  plane  and  the  year  before 
had  figured  in  a  Devonshire  motor-car  accident. 
Dinky-Dunk  had  a  picture  of  her,  from  The  Queen, 
up  in  his  study  somewhere,  the  picture  of  a  very  deb 
onair  and  slender  young  woman  on  an  Irish  hunter. 
He  had  a  still  younger  picture  of  her  in  a  tweed  skirt 
and  spats  and  golf-boots,  on  the  brick  steps  of  a  Sus 
sex  country-house,  with  the  jaw  of  a  bull-dog  resting 
across  her  knee.  It  was  signed  and  dated  and  in  a  silver 
frame  and  every  time  I'd  found  myself  polishing  that 
oblong  of  silver  I'd  done  so  with  a  wifely  ruffle  of 
temper. 

"How  much  was  it?"  I  finally  asked,  still  adhering 
to  my  r61e  of  the  imperturbable  chorus. 

"She  sent  out  over  seven  thousand  pounds.  Sha 
wanted  it  invested  out  here." 

"Why?" 

"Because  of  the  new  English  taxes,  I  suppose, 
She  said  she  wanted  a  ranch,  but  she  left  everything 
to  me." 

"Then  it  was  a  trust  fund!" 

Dinky-Dunk  bowed  his  head,  in  assent. 

"It  practically  amounted  to  that,"  he  acknowledged. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  35 

J'And  it's  gone?" 

"Every  penny  of  it." 

"But,  Dinky-Dunk,"  I  began.  I  didn't  need  to  con 
tinue^  for  he  seemed  abfe  to  read  my  thoughts. 

"I  was  counting  on  two  full  sections  for  Allie  in 
the  Simmond's  Valley  tract.  That  land  is  worth  thirty 
dollars  an  acre,  unbroken,  at  any  time.  But  the  bank's 
swept  that  into  the  bag,  of  course,  along  with  the  rest. 
The  whole  thing  was  like  a  stack  of  nine-pins — when 
one  tumbled,  it  knocked  the  other  over.  I  thought  I 
could  manage  to  save  that  much  for  her,  out  of  the 
ruin.  But  the  bank  saw  the  land-boom  was  petering 
out.  They  shut  off  my  credit,  and  foreclosed  on  the 
city  block — and  that  sent  the  whole  card-house  down." 

I  had  a  great  deal  of  thinking  to  do,  during  the 
next  minute  or  two. 

"Then  isn't  it  up  to  us  to  knuckle  down,  Dinky- 
Dunk,  and  make  good  on  that  Lady  Alicia  mistake? 
If  we  get  a  crop  this  year  we  can — " 

But  Dinky-Dunk  shook  his  head.  "A  thousand 
bushels  an  acre  couldn't  get  me  out  of  this  mess,"  he 
maintained. 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  your  Lady  Alicia  and  her  English  maid 
have  already  arrived  in  Montreal,"  he  quietly  an 
nounced. 

"How  do  you  know  that?" 

"She  wrote  to  me  from  New  York.    She's  had  in- 


fluenza,  and  it  left  her  with  a  wheezy  tube  and  a  spot 
on  her  lungs,  as  she  put  it.  Her  doctor  told  her  to  go 
to  Egypt,  but  she  says  Egypt's  impossible,  just  now, 
and  if  she  doesn't  like  our  West  she  says  she'll  amble 
on  to  Arizona,  or  try  California  for  the  winter."  He 
looked  away,  and  smiled  rather  wanly.  "She's  count 
ing  on  the  big  game  shooting  we  can  give  her!" 

"Grizzly,  and  buffalo,  and  that  sort  of  thing?" 

"I  suppose  so!" 

"And  she's  on  her  way  out  here?'* 

"She's  on  her  way  out  here  to  inspect  a  ranch  which 
doesn't  exist!'* 

I  sat  for  a  full  minute  gaping  into  Dinky-Dunk's 
woebegone  face.  And  still  again  I  had  considerable 
thinking  to  do. 

"Then  we'll  make  it  exist,"  I  finally  announced. 
But  Dinky-Dunk,  staring  gloomily  off  into  space, 
wasn't  even  interested.  They  had  stunned  the  spirit  out 
of  him.  He  wasn't  himself.  They'd  put  him  where 
even  a  well-turned  Scotch  scone  couldn't  appeal  to  him. 

"Listen,"  I  solemnly  admonished.  "If  this  Cousin 
Allie  of  yours  is  coming  out  here  for  a  ranch,  she's 
got  to  be  presented  with  one." 

"It  sounds  easy !"  he  said,  not  without  mockery. 

"And  apparently  the  only  way  we  can  see  that  she's 
given  her  money's  worth  is  to  hand  Casa  Grande  over 
to  her.  Surely  if  she  takes  this,  bag  and  baggage, 
she  ought  to  be  half-satisfied." 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  37 

Dinky-Dunk  looked  up  at  me  as  though  I  were  as 
sailing  him  with  the  ravings  of  a  mad-woman.  He 
knew  how  proud  I  had  always  been  of  that  prairie 
home  of  ours. 

"Casa  Grande  is  yours — yours  and  the  kiddies," 
he  reminded  me.  "You've  at  least  got  that,  and  God 
knows  you'll  need  it  now,  more  than  ever.  God  knows 
I've  at  least  kept  my  hands  off  that!" 

"But  don't  you  see  it  can't  be  ours,  it  can't  be  a 
home,  when  there's  a  debt  of  honor  between  us  and 
every  acre  of  it.'* 

"You're  in  no  way  involved  in  that  debt,"  cried 
out  my  lord  and  master,  with  a  trace  of  the  old  bat 
tling  light  in  his  eyes, 

"I'm  so  involved  in  it  that  I'm  going  to  give  up 
the  glory  of  a  two-story  house  with  hardwood  floors 
and  a  windmill  and  a  laundry  chute  and  a  real  bath 
room,  before  that  English  cousin  of  yours  can  find 
out  the  difference  between  a  spring-lamb  and  a  jack- 
rabbit!"  I  resolutely  informed  him.  "And  I'm  go 
ing  to  do  it  without  a  whimper.  Do  you  know  what 
we're  going  to  do,  O  lord  and  master  ?  We're  going 
to  take  our  kiddies  and  our  chattels  and  our  precious 
selves  over  to  that  Harris  Ranch,  and  there  we're 
going  to  begin  over  again  just  as  we  did  nearly  four 
years  ago!"  Dinky-Dunk  tried  to  stop  me,  but  I 
•warned  him  aside.  "Don't  think  I'm  doing  anything 
romantic.  I'm  doing  something  so  practical  that  the 


38  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

more  I  think  of  it  the  more  I  see  it's  the  only  thing 
possible." 

He  sat  looking  at  me  as  though  he  had  forgotten 
what  my  features  were  like  and  was  just  discovering 
that  my  nose,  after  all,  hadn't  really  been  put  on 
straight.  Then  the  old  battling  light  grew  stronger 
than  ever  in  his  eyes. 

"It's  not  going  to  be  the  only  thing  possible,"  he 
declared.  "And  I'm  not  going  to  make  you  pay  for 
my  mistakes.  Not  on  your  life !  I  could  have  swung 
the  farm  lands,  all  right,  even  though  they  did  have 
me  with  my  back  to  the  wall,  if  only  the  city  stuff 
hadn't  gone  dead — so  dead  that  to-day  you  couldn't 
even  give  it  away.  I'm  not  an  embezzler.  Allie  sent 
me  out  that  money  to  take  a  chance  with,  and  by  tak 
ing  a  double  chance  I  honestly  thought  I  could  get 
her  double  returns.  As  you  say,  it  was  a  gambler's 
chance.  But  the  cards  broke  against  me.  The  thing 
that  hurts  is  that  I've  probably  just  about  cleaned 
the  girl  out." 

"How  do  you  know  that?"  I  asked,  wondering  why 
I  was  finding  it  so  hard  to  sympathize  with  that  de 
nuded  and  deluded  English  cousin. 

"Because  I  know  what's  happened  to  about  all  of 
the  older  families  and  estates  over  there,"  retorted 
Dinky-Dunk.  "The  government  has  pretty  well 
picked  them  clean." 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  39 

"Could  I  see  your  Cousin  Allie's  letters?" 

"What  good  would  it  do?"  asked  the  dour  man 
across  the  table  from  me.  "The  fat's  in  the  fire,  and 
we've  got  to  face  the  consequences." 

"And  that's  exactly  what  I've  been  trying  to  tell 
you,  you  foolish  old  calvanistic  autocrat !  We've  got 
to  face  the  consequences,  and  the  only  way  to  do  it 
is  to  do  it  the  way  I've  said." 

Dinky-Dunk's  face  softened  a  little,  and  he  seemed 
almost  ready  to  smile.  But  he  very  quickly  clouded 
up  again,  just  as  my  own  heart  clouded  up.  For  I 
knew,  notwithstanding  my  willingness  to  deny  it,  that 
I  was  once  more  acting  on  impulse,  very  much  as  I'd 
acted  on  impulse  four  long  years  ago  in  that  residu 
ary  old  horse-hansom  in  Central  Park  when  I  agreed 
to  marry  Duncan  Argyll  McKail  before  I  was  even 
in  love  with  him.  But,  like  most  women,  I  was  will 
ing  to  let  Reason  step  down  off  the  bridge  and  have 
Intuition  pilot  me  through  the  more  troubled  waters 
of  a  life-crisis.  For  I  knew  that  I  was  doing  the 
right  thing,  even  though  it  seemed  absurd,  even 
though  at  first  sight  it  seemed  too  prodigious  a  sac 
rifice,  just  as  I'd  done  the  right  thing  when  in  the  face 
of  tribal  reasoning  and  logic  I'd  gone  kiting  off  to  a 
prairie-ranch  and  a  wickiup  with  a  leaky  roof.  It 
was  a  tumble,  but  it  was  a  tumble  into  a  pansy-bed. 
And  I  was  thinking  that  luck  would  surely  be  with  me 


40  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

a  second  time,  though  thought  skidded,  like  a  tire  on 
ft  wet  pavement,  every  time  I  tried  to  foresee  what  this 
newer  change  would  mean  to  me  and  mine. 

"You're  not  going  to  face  another  three  years  of 
drudgery  and  shack-dirt,"  declared  Dinky-Dunk,  fol 
lowing,  oddly  enough,  my  own  line  of  thought.  "You 
went  through  that  once,  and  once  was  enough.  Ifs 
not  fair.  It's  not  reasonable.  It's  not  even  thinkable. 
You  weren't  made  for  that  sort  of  thing,  and — " 

"Listen  to  me,"  I  broke  in,  doing  my  best  to  speak 
calmly  and  quietly.  "Those  three  years  were  really 
the  happiest  three  years  of  all  my  life.  I  love  to  re 
member  them,  for  they  mean  so  much  more  than  all 
the  others.  There  were  a  lot  of  the  frills  and  fixin's 
of  life  that  we  had  to  do  without.  But  those  three 
years  brought  us  closer  together,  Dinky-Dunk,  than 
we  have  ever  been  since  we  moved  into  this  big  house 
and  got  on  bowing  terms  again  with  luxury.  I  don't 
know  whether  you've  given  it  much  thought  or  not, 
husband  o'  mine,  but  during  the  last  year  or  two 
there's  been  a  change  taking  place  in  us.  You've 
been  worried  and  busy  and  forever  on  the  wing,  and 
there  have  been  days  when  I've  felt  you  were  almost  a 
stranger  to  me,  as  though  I'd  got  to  be  a  sort  of  ac 
cident  in  your  life.  Remember,  Honey-Chile,  I'm  not 
blaming  you ;  I'm  only  pointing  out  certain  obvious 
truths,  now  tine  time  for  a  little  honest  talk  seems  to 
have  cropped  up.  You  were  up  to  your  ears  in  a  fight, 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  41 

in  a  tremendously  big  fight,  for  success  and  money; 
and  you  were  doing  it  more  for  me  and  Dinkie  and 
Poppsy  and  Pee- Wee  than  for  yourself.  You  couldn't 
help  remembering  that  I'd  been  a  city  girl  and  imagin 
ing  that  prairie-life  was  a  sort  of  penance  I  was  un 
dergoing  before  passing  on  to  the  joys  of  paradise 
in  an  apartment-hotel  with  a  mail-chute  outside  the 
door  and  the  sound  of  the  Elevated  outside  the  win 
dows.  And  you  were  terribly  wrong  in  all  that,  for 
there  have  been  days  and  days,  Dinky-Dunk,  when 
I've  been  homesick  for  that  old  slabsided  ranch-shack 
and  the  glory  of  seeing  you  come  in  ruddy  and  hun 
gry  and  happy  for  the  ham  and  eggs  and  bread  I'd 
cooked  with  my  own  hands.  It  seemed  to  bring  us 
so  gloriously  close  together.  It  seemed  so  homy  and 
happy-go-lucky  and  soul-satisfying  in  its  complete 
ness,  and  we  weren't  forever  fretting  about  bank-bal 
ances  and  taxes  and  over-drafts.  I  was  just  a  ran 
cher's  wife  then — and  I  can't  help  feeling  that  all 
along  there  was  something  in  that  simple  life  we  didn't 
value  enough.  We  were  just  rubes  and  hicks  and 
clodhoppers  and  hay-tossers  in  those  days,  and  we 
weren't  staying  awake  nights  worrying  about  land- 
speculations  and  water-fronts  and  trying  to  make  our 
selves  millionaires  when  we  might  have  been  making 
ourselves  more  at  peace  with  our  own  souls.  And  now 
that  our  card-house  of  high  finance  has  gone  to  smash, 
I  realize  more  than  ever  that  I've  got  to  be  at  peace 


42  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

with  my  own  soul  and  on  speaking  terms  with  my  own 
husband.  And  if  this  strikes  you  as  an  exceptionally 
long-winded  sermon,  my  beloved,  it's  merely  to  make 
plain  to  you  that  I  haven't  surrendered  to  any  sudden 
wave  of  emotionalism  when  I  talk  about  migrating 
over  to  that  Harris  Ranch.  It's  nothing  more  than 
good  old  hard-headed,  practical  self-preservation,  for 
I  wouldn't  care  to  live  without  you,  Dinky-Dunk,  any 
more  than  I  imagine  you'd  care  to  live  without  your 
own  self-respect." 

I  sat  back,  after  what  I  suppose  was  the  longest 
speech  I  ever  made  in  my  life,  and  studied  my  lord  and 
master's  face.  It  was  not  an  easy  map  to  decipher,  for 
man,  after  all,  is  a  pretty  complex  animal  and  even  in 
his  more  elemental  moments  is  played  upon  by  pretty 
complex  forces.  And  if  there  was  humility  on  that 
lean  and  rock-ribbed  countenance  of  my  soul-mate 
there  was  also  antagonism,  and  mixed  up  with  the  an 
tagonism  was  a  sprinkling  of  startled  wonder,  and 
tangled  up  with  the  wonder  was  a  slightly  perplexed 
brand  of  contrition,  and  interwoven  with  that  again 
was  a  suggestion  of  allegiance  revived,  as  though  he 
had  forgotten  that  he  possessed  a  wife  who  had  a 
heart  and  mind  of  her  own,  who  was  even  worth  stick 
ing  to  when  the  rest  of  the  world  was  threatening  to 
give  him  the  cold  shoulder.  He  felt  abstractedly 
down  in  his  coat  pocket  for  his  pipe,  which  is  always 
a  helpful  sign. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  43 

"It's  big  and  fine  of  you,  Chaddie,  to  put  it  that 
way,"  he  began,  rather  awkwardly,  and  with  just  a 
touch  of  color  coming  to '  his  rather  gray-looking 
cheek-bones.  "But  can't  you  see  that  now  it's  the 
children  we've  got  to  think  of?" 

"I  have  thought  of  them,"  I  quietly  announced. 
As  though  any  mother,  on  prairie  or  in  metropolis, 
didn't  think  of  them  first  and  last  and  in-between- 
whiles  !  "And  that's  what  simplifies  the  situation. 
I  want  them  to  have  a  fair  chance.  I'd  rather  they — " 

"It's  not  quite  that  criminal,"  cut  in  Dinky-Dunk, 
with  almost  an  angry  flush  creeping  up  toward  his 
forehead. 

"I'm  only  taking  your  own  word  for  that,"  I  re 
minded  him,  deliberately  steeling  my  heart  against 
the  tides  of  compassion  that  were  trying  to  dissolve 
it.  "And  I'm  only  taking  what  is,  after  all,  the  eas 
iest  course  out  of  the  situation." 

Dinky-Dunk's*  color  receded,  leaving  his  face  even 
more  than  ever  the  color  of  old  cheese,  for  all  the 
tan  of  wind  and  sun  which  customarily  tinted  it,  like 
afterglow  on  a  stubbled  hillside. 

"But  Lady  Alicia  herself  still  has  something  to  say 
about  all  this,"  he  reminded  me. 

"Lady  Alicia  had  better  rope  in  her  ranch  when  the 
roping  is  good,"  I  retorted,  chilled  a  little  by  her  re 
peated  intrusion  into  the  situation.  For  I  had  no  in 
tention  of  speaking  of  Lady  Alicia  Newland  with 


44  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

bated  breath,  just  because  she  had  a  title.  I'd 
scratched  dances  with  a  duke  or  two  myself,  in  my 
time,  even  though  I  could  already  see  myself  once  more 
wielding  a  kitchen-mop  and  tamping  a  pail  against  a 
hog-trough,  over  at  the  Harris  Ranch. 

"You're  missing  the  point,"  began  Dinky-Dunk. 

"Listen  1"  I  suddenly  commanded.  A  harried  roe 
buck  has  nothing  on  a  young  mother  for  acuteness  of 
hearing.  And  thin  and  faint,  from  above-stairs,  I 
caught  the  sound  of  a  treble  wailing  which  was 
promptly  augmented  into  a  duet. 

"Poppsy's  got  Pee-Wee  awake,"  I  announced  as  I 
rose  from  my  chair.  It  seemed  something  suddenly 
remote  and  small,  this  losing  of  a  fortune,  before  the 
more  imminent  problem  of  getting  a  pair  of  crying 
babies  safely  to  sleep.  I  realized  that  as  I  ran  up 
stairs  and  started  the  swing-box  penduluming  back 
and  forth.  I  even  found  myself  much  calmer  in  spirit 
by  the  time  I'd  crooned  and  soothed  the  Twins  off 
again.  And  I  was  smiling  a  little,  I  think,  as  I  went 
down  to  my  poor  old  Dinky-Dunk,  for  he  held  out  a 
hand  and  barred  my  way  as  I  rounded  the  table  to 
resume  my  seat  opposite  him. 

"You  don't  despise  me,  do  you  ?"  he  demanded,  hold 
ing  me  by  the  sleeve  and  studying  me  with  a  slightly 
mystified  eye.  It  was  an  eye  as  wistful  as  an  old 
hound's  in  winter,  an  eye  with  a  hunger  I'd  not  seen 
there  this  many  a  day. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  45 

"Despise  you,  Acushla?"  I  echoed,  with  a  catch  i«. 
my  throat,  as  my  arms  closed  about  him.  And  as  he 
clung  to  me,  with  a  forlorn  sort  of  desperation,  a  soul- 
Chinook  seemed  to  sweep  up  the  cold  fogs  that  had 
gathered  and  swung  between  us  for  so  many  months. 
I'd  worried,  in  secret,  about  that  fog.  I'd  tried  to  tell 
myself  that  it  was  the  coming  of  the  children  that  had 
made  the  difference,  since  a  big  strong  man,  naturally, 
had  to  take  second  place  to  those  helpless  little  mites. 
But  my  Dinky-Dunk  had  a  place  in  my  heart  which 
no  snoozerette  could  fill  and  no  infant  could  usurp.  He 
was  my  man,  my  mate,  my  partner  in  this  tangled 
adventure  called  life,  and  so  long  as  I  had  him  they 
could  take  the  house  with  the  laundry-chute  and  the 
last  acre  of  land. 

"My  dear,  my  dear,"  I  tried  to  tell  him,  "I  was 
never  hungry  for  money.  The  one  thing  I've  always 
been  hungry  for  is  love.  What'd  be  the  good  of  hav 
ing  a  millionaire  husband  if  he  looked  like  a  man  in 
a  hair-shirt  on  every  occasion  when  you  asked  for  a 
moment  of  his  time?  And  what's  the  good  of  life  if 
you  can't  crowd  a  little  affection  into  it?  I  was  just 
thinking  we're  all  terribly  like  children  in  a  May 
pole  dance.  We're  so  impatient  to  get  our  colored 
bands  wound  neatly  about  a  wooden  stick,  a  wooden 
stick  that  can  never  be  ours,  that  we  make  a  mad  race 
of  what  really  ought  to  be  a  careless  and  leisurely  joy. 
We  don't  remember  to  enjoy  the  dancing,  and  we 


46  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

seem  to  get  so  mixed  in  our  ends.  So  carpe  diem, 
say  I.  And  perhaps  you  remember  that  sentence  from 
Epictetus  you  once  wrote  out  on  a  slip  of  paper  and 
pinned  to  my  bedroom  door:  'Better  it  is  that  great 
souls  should  live  in  small  habitations  than  that  abject 
slaves  should  burrow  in  great  houses !' J: 

Dinky-Dunk,  as  I  sat  brushing  back  his  top-knot, 
regarded  me  with  a  sad  and  slightly  acidulated  smile. 

"You'd  need  all  that  philosophy,  and  a  good  deal 
more,  before  you'd  lived  for  a  month  in  a  place  like 
the  Harris  shack,"  he  warned  me. 

"Not  if  I  knew  you  loved  me,  O  Kaikobad,"  I  very 
promptly  informed  him. 

"But  you  do  know  that,"  he  contended,  man -like. 
I  was  glad  to  find,  though,  that  a  little  of  the  bitter 
ness  had  gone  out  of  his  eyes. 

"Feather-headed  women  like  me,  Diddums,  hunger 
to  hear  that  sort  of  thing,  hunger  to  hear  it  all  the 
time.  On  that  theme  they  want  their  husbands  to  be 
like  those  little  Japanese  wind-harps  that  don't  even 
know  how  to  be  silent." 

"Then  why  did  you  say,  about  a  month  ago,  that 
marriage  was  like  Hogan's  Alley,  the  deeper  one  got 
into  it  the  tougher  it  was?" 

"Why  did  you  go  off  to  Edmonton  for  three  whole 
days  without  kissing  me  good-by?"  I  countered.  I 
tried  to  speak  lightly,  but  it  took  an  effort.  For  my 
husband's  neglect,  on  that  occasion,  had  seemed  the 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  47 

first  intimation  that  the  glory  was  over  and  done 
with.  It  had  given  me  about  the  same  feeling  that  we 
used  to  have  as  flapperettes  when  the  circus-manager 
mounted  the  tub  and  began  to  announce  the  after- 
concert,  all  for  the  price  of  ten  cents,  one  dime ! 

"I  wanted  to,  Tabbie,  but  you  impressed  me  as 
looking  rather  unapproachable  that  day." 

"When  the  honey  is  scarce,  my  dear,  even  bees  are 
said  to  be  cross,"  I  reminded  him.  "And  that's  the 
thing  that  disturbs  me,  Dinky-Dunk.  It  must  disturb 
any  woman  to  remember  that  she's  left  her  happiness 
in  one  man's  hand.  And  it's  more  than  one's  mere 
happiness,  for  mixed  up  with  that  is  one's  sense  of 
humor  and  one's  sense  of  proportion.  They  all  go, 
when  you  make  me  miserable.  And  the  Lord  knows, 
my  dear,  that  a  woman  without  a  sense  of  humor  is 
worse  than  a  dipper  without  a  handle." 

Dinky-Dunk  sat  studying  me. 

"I  guess  it  was  my  own  sense  of  proportion  that 
got  out  of  kilter,  Gee-Gee,"  he  finally  said.  "But 
there's  one  thing  I  want  you  to  remember.  If  I  got 
deeper  into  this  game  than  I  should  have,  it  wasn't 
for  what  money  meant  to  me.  I've  never  been  able  to 
forget  what  I  took  you  away  from.  I  took  you  away 
from  luxury  and  carted  you  out  here  to  the  end  of 
Nowhere  and  had  you  leave  behind  about  everything 
that  made  life  decent.  And  the  one  thing  I've  always 
Wanted  to  do  is  make  good  on  that  over-draft  on  your 


48  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

bank-account  of  happiness.  I've  wanted  to  give  back 
to  you  the  things  you  sacrificed.  I  knew  I  owed  you 
that,  all  along.  And  when  the  children  came  I  saw 
that  I  owed  it  to  you  more  than  ever.  I  want  to  give 
Dinky-Dink  and  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  a  fair  chance 
in  life.  I  want  to  be  able  to  start  them  right,  just 
as  much  as  you  do.  And  you  can't  be  dumped  back 
into  a  three-roomed  wickiup,  with  three  children  to 
bring  up,  and  feel  that  you're  doing  the  right  thing 
by  your  family." 

It  wasn't  altogether  happy  talk,  but  deep  down  in 
my  heart  I  was  glad  we  were  having  it.  It  seemed  to 
clear  the  air,  very  much  as  a  good  old-fashioned  thun 
der-storm  can.  It  left  us  stumbling  back  to  the  es 
sentials  of  existence.  It  showed  us  where  we  stood, 
and  what  we  meant  to  each  other,  what  we  must  mean 
to  each  other.  And  now  that  the  chance  had  come,  I 
intended  to  have  my  say  out. 

"The  things  that  make  life  decent,  Dinky-Dunk, 
are  the  things  that  we  carry  packed  away  in  our  own 
immortal  soul,  the  homely  old  things  like  honesty  and 
self-respect  and  contentment  of  mind.  And  if  we've 
got  to  cut  close  to  the  bone  before  we  can  square  up 
our  ledger  of  life,  let's  start  the  carving  while  we  have 
the  chance.  Let's  get  our  conscience  clear  and  know 
we're  playing  the  game." 

I  was  dreadfully  afraid  he  was  going  to  laugh  at 
me,  it  sounded  so  much  like  pulpiteering.  But  I  wag 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  49 

in  earnest,  passionately  in  earnest,  and  my  lord  and 
master  seemed  to  realize  it. 

"Have  you  thought  about  the  kiddies?"  he  asked 
me,  for  the  second  time. 

"I'm  always  thinking  about  the  kiddies,"  I  told  him, 
a  trifle  puzzled  by  the  wince  which  so  simple  a  state 
ment  could  bring  to  his  face.  His  wondering  eye, 
staring  through  the  open  French  doors  of  the  living- 
room,  rested  on  my  baby  grand. 

"How  about  that?"  he  demanded,  with  a  grim  head- 
nod  toward  the  piano. 

"That  may  help  to  amuse  Lady  Alicia,"  I  just  as 
grimly  retorted. 

He  stared  about  that  comfortable  home  which  we 
had  builded  up  out  of  our  toil,  stared  about  at  it  as 
I've  seen  emigrants  stare  back  at  the  receding  shores 
of  the  land  they  loved.  Then  he  sat  studying  my  face. 

"How  long  is  it  since  you've  seen  the  inside  of  the 
Harris  shack?"  he  suddenly  asked  me. 

"Last  Friday  when  I  took  the  bacon  and  oatmeal 
over  to  Soapy  and  Francois  and  Whinstane  Sandy," 
I  told  him. 

"And  what  did  you  think  of  that  shack?" 

"It  impressed  me  as  being  sadly  in  need  of  soap 
and  water,"  I  calmy  admitted.  "It's  like  any  other 
shack  where  two  or  three  men  have  been  batching — 
no  better  and  no  worse  than  the  wickiup  I  came  to 
here  on  my  honeymoon." 


nO  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

Dinky-Dunk  looked  about  at  me  quickly,  as  though 
»n  search  of  some  touch  of  malice  in  that  statement. 
He  seemed  bewildered,  in  fact,  to  find  that  I  was  able 
to  smile  at  him. 

"But  that,  Chaddie,  was  nearly  four  long  years 
ago,"  he  reminded  me,  with  a  morose  and  meditative 
clouding  of  the  brow.  And  I  knew  exactly  what  he 
was  thinking  about. 

"I'll  know  better  how  to  go  about  it  this  time,"  I 
announced  with  my  stubbornest  Doctor  Pangless  grin. 

"But  there  are  two  things  you  haven't  taken  into 
consideration,"  Dinky-Dunk  reminded  me. 

"What  are  they?"  I  demanded. 

"One  is  the  matter  of  ready  money." 

"I've  that  six  hundred  dollars  from  my  Chilean  ni 
trate  shares,"  I  proudly  announced.  "And  Uncle  Carl- 
ton  said  that  if  the  Company  ever  gets  reorganized 
it  ought  to  be  a  paying  concern." 

Dinky-Dunk,  however,  didn't  seem  greatly  im 
pressed  with  either  the  parade  of  my  secret  nest-egg 
or  the  promise  of  my  solitary  plunge  into  finance. 
"What's  the  other?"  I  asked  as  he  still  sat  frowning 
over  his  empty  pipe. 

"The  other  is  Lady  Alicia  herself,"  he  finally  ex 
plained. 

"What  can  she  do?" 

"She  may  cause  complications." 

"What  kind  of  complications?" 


51 


"I  can't  tell  until  I've  seen  her,"  was  Dinky-Dunk's 
none  too  definite  reply. 

"Then  we  needn't  cross  that  bridge  until  we  come 
to  it,"  I  announced  as  I  sat  watching  Dinky-Dunk 
pack  the  bowl  of  his  pipe  and  strike  a  match.  It 
seemed  a  trivial  enough  movement.  Yet  it  was  monu 
mental  in  its  homeliness.  It  was  poignant  with  a 
power  to  transport  me  back  to  earlier  and  happier 
days,  to  the  days  when  one  never  thought  of  feather 
ing  the  nest  of  existence  with  the  illusions  of  old  age. 
A  vague  loneliness  ate  at  my  heart,  the  same  as  a  rat 
teats  at  a  cellar  beam. 

I  crossed  over  to  my  husband's  side  and  stood  with 
one  hand  on  his  shoulder  as  he  sat  there  smoking. 
I  waited  for  him  to  reach  out  for  my  other  hand.  But 
the  burden  of  his  troubles  seemed  too  heavy  to  let  him 
remember.  He  smoked  morosely  on.  He  sat  in  a 
sort  of  self-immuring  torpor,  staring  out  over  what 
he  still  regarded  as  the  wreck  of  his  career.  So  I 
stooped  down  and  helped  myself  to  a  very  smoky  kiss 
before  I  went  off  up-stairs  to  bed.  For  the  children ., 
I  knew,  would  have  me  awake  early  enough — and 
nursing  mothers  needs  must  sleep! 


I  HAVE  won  my  point.  Dinky-Dunk  has  succumbed. 
The  migration  is  under  way.  The  great  trek  has  be 
gun.  In  plain  English,  we're  moving. 

I  rather  hate  to  think  about  it.  We  seem  so  like 
the  Children  of  Israel  bundled  out  of  a  Promised  Land, 
or  old  Adam  and  Eve  turned  out  of  the  Garden  with 
their  little  Cains  and  Abels.  "We're  up  against  it, 
Gee-Gee,"  as  Dinky-Dunk  grimly  observed.  I  could 
see  that  we  were,  without  his  telling  me.  But  I  re 
fused  to  acknowledge  it,  even  to  myself.  And  it 
wasn't  the  first  occasion.  This  time,  thank  heaven, 
I  can  at  least  face  it  with  fortitude,  if  not  with  relish. 
I  don't  like  poverty.  And  I  don't  intend  to  like  it. 
And  I'm  not  such  a  l^pocrite  as  to  make  a  pretense 
of  liking  it.  But  I  do  intend  to  show  my  Dinky-Dunk 
that  I'm  something  more  than  a  household  ornament, 
just  as  I  intend  to  show  myself  that  I  can  be  some 
thing  more  than  a  breeder  of  children.  I  have  given 
my  three  "hostages  to  fortune" — and  during  the  last 
few  days  when  we've  been  living,  like  the  infant  Moses, 
in  a  series  of  rushes,  I  have  awakened  to  the  fact  that 
they  are  indeed  hostages.  For  the  little  tikes,  no  mat 
ter  how  you  maneuver,  still  demand  a  big  share  of 
your  time  and  energy.  But  one  finally  manages,  in 

52 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  53 

some  way  or  another.  Dinky-Dunk  threatens  to  ex 
pel  me  from  the  Mothers'  Union  when  I  work  over 
time,  and  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  unite  in  letting  me 
know  when  I've  been  foolish  enough  to  pass  my  fa 
tigue-point.  Yet  I've  been  sloughing  off  some  of  my 
old-time  finicky  ideas  about  child-raising  and  revert 
ing  to  the  peasant-type  of  conduct  which  I  once  so 
abhorred  in  my  Finnish  Olga.  And  I  can't  say  that 
either  I  or  my  family  seem  to  have  suffered  much  in 
the  process.  I  feel  almost  uncannily  well  and  strong 
now,  and  am  a  wolf  for  work.  If  nothing  else  hap 
pened  when  our  apple-cart  went  over,  it  at  least  broke 
the  monotony  of  life.  I'm  able  to  wring,  in  fact,  just 
a  touch  of  relish  out  of  all  this  migrational  movement 
and  stir,  and  Casa  Grande  itself  is  already  beginning 
to  remind  me  of  a  liner's  stateroom  about  the  time  the 
pilot  comes  aboard  and  the  donkey-engines  start  to 
clatter  up  with  the  trunk-nets. 

For  three  whole  days  I  simply  ached  to  get  at  the 
Harris  Ranch  shack,  just  to  show  what  I  could  do 
with  it.  And  1  realized  when  Dinky-Dunk  and  I  drove 
over  to  it  in  the  buckboard,  on  a  rather  nippy  morn 
ing  when  it  was  a  joy  to  go  spanking  along  the  prai 
rie  trail  with  the  cold  air  etching  rosettes  on  your 
cheek-bones,  that  it  was  a  foeman  well  worthy  of  my 
steel.  At  a  first  inspection,  indeed,  it  didn't  look  any 
too  promising.  It  didn't  exactly  stand  up  on  the  prai 
rie-floor  and  shout  "Welcome"  into  your  ears.  There 


'54  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

was  an  overturned  windmill  and  a  broken-down  stable 
that  needed  a  new  roof,  and  a  well  that  had  a  pump 
which  wouldn't  work  without  priming.  There  was  an 
untidy-looking  corral,  and  a  reel  for  stringing  up 
slaughtered  beeves,  and  an  overturned  Red  River  cart 
bleached  as  white  as  a  buffalo  skeleton.  As  for  the 
wickiup  itself,  it  was  well-enough  built,  but  lacking 
in  windows  and  quite  unfinished  as  to  the  interior. 

I  told  Dinky-Dunk  I  wanted  two  new  window- 
frames,  beaverboard  for  inside  lining,  and  two  gallons 
of  paint.  I  have  also  demanded  a  lean-to,  to  serve  as 
an  extra  bedroom  and  nursery,  and  a  brand-new  bunk- 
house  for  the  hired  "hands"  when  they  happen  to 
come  along.  I  have  also  insisted  on  a  covered  veranda 
and  sleeping  porch  on  the  south  side  of  the  shack,  and 
fly-screens,  and  repairs  to  the  chimney  to  stop  the 
range  from  smoking.  And  since  the  cellar,  which  is 
merely  timbered,  will  have  to  be  both  my  coal-hole  and 
my  storage-room,  it  most  assuredly  will  have  to  be  ce 
mented.  I  explained  to  Dinky-Dunk  that  I  wanted 
eave-troughs  on  both  the  shack  and  the  stable,  for  the 
sake  of  the  soft-water,  and  proceeded  to  point  out  the 
need  of  a  new  washing-machine,  and  a  kiddie-coop  for 
Poppsy  and  Pee- Wee  as  soon  as  the  weather  got  warm, 
and  a  fence,  hog-tight  and  horse-high,  about  my  half- 
acre  of  kitchen  garden. 

Dinky-Dunk  sat  staring  at  me  with  a  wry  though 
slightly  woebegone  face. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  55 

"Look  here,  Lady-Bird,  all  this  sort  of  thing  takes 
'rhino,'  which  means  ready  money.  And  where's  it  go 
ing  to  come  from?" 

"I'll  use  that  six  hundred,  as  long  as  it  lasts,"  I 
blithely  retorted.  "And  then  we'll  get  credit." 

"But  my  credit  is  gone,"  Dinky-Dunk  dolorously 
acknowledged. 

"Then  what's  the  matter  with  mine?"  I  demanded. 
I  hadn't  meant  to  hurt  him,  when  I  said  that.  But  I 
refused  to  be  downed.  And  I  intended  to  make  my 
ranch  a  success. 

"It's  still  quite  unimpaired,  I  suppose,"  he  said  in 
a  thirty-below-zero  sort  of  voice. 

"Goose !"  I  said,  with  a  brotherly  pat  on  his  droop 
ing  shoulder.  But  my  lord  and  master  refused  to  be 
cheered  up. 

"It's  going  to  take  more  than  optimism  to  carry 
us  through  this  first  season,"  he  explained  to  me.  "And 
the  only  way  that  I  can  see  is  for  me  to  get  out  and 
rustle  for  work." 

"What  kind  of  work?"  I  demanded. 

"The  kind  there's  a  famine  for,  at  this  very  mo 
ment,"  was  Dinky-Dunk's  reply. 

"You  don't  mean  being  somebody  else's  hired  man  ?" 
I  said,  aghast. 

"A  hired  man  can  get  four  dollars  a  day  and  board," 
retorted  my  husband.  "And  a  man  and  team  can  get 
nine  dollars  a  day.  We  can't  keep  things  going  with- 


56  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

out  ready  money.  And  there's  only  one  way,  out  here, 
of  getting1  it." 

Dinky-Dunk  was  able  to  laugh  at  the  look  of  dis 
may  that  came  into  my  face.  I  hadn't  stopped  to  pic 
ture  myself  as  the  wife  of  a  hired  "hand."  I  hadn't 
quite  realized  just  what  we'd  descended  to.  I  hadn't 
imagined  just  how  much  one  needed  working  capital, 
even  out  here  on  the  edge  of  Nowhere. 

"But  never  that  way,  Diddums !"  I  cried  out  in  dis 
may,  as  I  pictured  my  husband  bunking  with  a  sweaty- 
smelling  plowing-gang  of  Swedes  and  Finns  and  ho 
boing  about  the  prairie  with  a  thrashing  outfit  of  the 
Great  Unwashed.  He'd  get  cooties,  or  rheumatism,. 
or  a  sunstroke,  or  a  knife  between  his  ribs  some  fine 
night — and  then  where'd  I  be  ?  I  couldn't  think  of  it. 
I  couldn't  think  of  Duncan  Argyll  McKail,  the  de 
scendant  of  Scottish  kings  and  second-cousin  to  a 
title,  hiring  out  to  some  old  skinflint  of  a  farmer  who'd 
have  him  up  at  four  in  the  morning  and  keep  him  on 
the  go  until  eight  at  night. 

"Then  what  other  way?"  asked  Dinky -Dunk. 

"You  leave  it  to  me,"  I  retorted.  I  made  a  bluff  of 
saying  it  bravely  enough,  but  I  inwardly  decided  that 
instead  of  sixteen  yards  of  fresh  chintz  I'd  have  to  be 
Satisfied  with  five  yards.  Poverty,  after  all,  is  not  a 
picturesque  thing.  But  I  didn't  intend  to  be  poor,  I 
protested  to  my  troubled  soul,  as  I  went  at  that  Harris 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  57 

Ranch  wickiup,  tooth  and  nail,  while  Iroquois  Annie 
kept  an  eye  on  Dinkie  and  the  Twins. 

These  same  Twins,  I  can  more  than  ever  see,  are  go 
ing  to  be  somewhat  of  a  brake  on  the  wheels  of  indus 
try.  I  have  even  been  feeding  on  "slops,"  of  late,  to 
the  end  that  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  may  thrive.  And 
already  I  see  sex-differences  asserting  themselves.  Pee- 
Wee  is  a  bit  of  a  stoic,  while  his  sister  shows  a  ten 
dency  to  prove  a  bit  of  a  squealer.  But  Poppsy  is 
much  the  daintier  feeder  of  the  two.  I'll  probably  have 
to  wean  them  both,  however,  before  many  more  weeks 
slip  by.  As  soon  as  we  get  settled  in  our  new  shack 
and  I  can  be  sure  of  a  one-cow  supply  of  milk  I'll  be 
gin  a  bottle-feed  once  in  every  twenty-four  hours. 
Dinky-Dunk  says  I  ought  to  take  a  tip  from  the  In 
dian  mother,  who  sometimes  nurses  her  babe  until  he's 
two  and  three  years  old.  I  asked  Ikkie — as  Dinkie 
calls  Iroquois  Annie — about  this  and  Ikkie  says  the 
teepee  squaw  has  no  cow's  milk  and  has  to  keep  on  the 
move,  so  she  feeds  him  breast-milk  until  he's  able  to 
eat  meat.  Ikkie  informs  me  that  she  has  seen  a  pa 
poose  turn  away  from  its  mother's  breast  to  take  a 
puff  or  two  at  a  pipe.  From  which  I  assume  that  the 
noble  Red  Man  learns  to  smoke  quite  early  in  life. 

Ikkie  has  also  been  enlightening  me  on  other  baby- 
customs  of  her  ancestors,  explaining  that  it  was  once 
the  habit  for  a  mother  to  name  her  baby  for  the  first 


58 


thing  seen  after  its  birth.  That,  I  told  Dinky-Dunk, 
was  probably  why  there  were  so  many  "Running  Rab 
bits,"  and  "White  Pups"  and  "Black  Calfs"  over  on 
the  Reservation.  And  that  started  me  maun  enlarging 
on  the  names  of  Indians  he'd  known,  the  most  elon 
gated  of  which,  he  acknowledged,  was  probably 
"The  -  Man  -  Who  -  Gets-Up-In-The-Middle-Of-The- 
Night-To-Feed-Oats-To-His-Pony,"  whil  -  the  most  de 
scriptive  was\"Slow-To-Comc  Over-The-Hill,"  though 
"Shot-At-Many-Times"  was  not  without  value,  and 
"Long-Time-No-See-Him,"  as  the  appellative  for  a 
disconsolate  young  squaw,  carried  a  slight  hint  of  the 
Indian's  genius  for  nomenclature.  Another  thing 
mentioned  by  Dunkie,  which  has  stuck  in  my  memory, 
was  his  running  across  a  papoose's  grave  in  an  Indian 
burying-ground  at  Pincer  Creek,  when  he  was  survey 
ing,  where  the  Indian  baby  had  been  buried — above- 
ground,  of  course — in  an  old  Saratoga  trunk.  That 
served  to  remind  me  of  Francois'  story  about  "Old 
Sun,"  who  preceded  "Running  Rabbit" — note  the 
name — as  chief  of  the  Alberta  Blackfoot  tribe,  and  al 
ways  carried  among  his  souvenirs  of  conquest  a  beauti 
ful  white  scalp,  with  hair  of  the  purest  gold,  very 
long  and  fine,  but  would  never  reveal  how  or  where  he 
got  it.  Many  a  night,  when  I  couldn't  sleep,  I've 
worried  about  that  white  scalp,  and  dramatized  the  cir 
cumstances  of  its  gathering.  Who  was  the  girl  with 
the  long  and  lovely  tresses  of  purest  gold?  And  did 


59 


ssKei  die  bravely?  And  did  she  meet  death  honorably 
and  decently,  or  after  the  manner  of  certain  of  the 
Jesuits'  Relations? 

I  have  had  a  talk  with  Whinnie,  otherwise  Whin- 
stane  Sandy,  who  has  been  ditching  at  the  far  end  of 
our  half-section.  I  explained  the  situation  to  him 
quite  openly,  acknowledging  that  we  were  on  the  rocks 
but  not  yet  wrecked,  and  pointing  out  that  there 
might  be  a  few  months  before  the  ghost  could  walk 
again.  And  Whinstane  Sandy  has  promised  to  stick. 
Poor  old  Whinnie  not  only  promised  to  stick,  but  vol 
unteered  that  if  he  could  get  over  to  Seattle  or  'Frisco 
and  raise  some  money  on  his  Klondike  claim  our 
troubles  would  be  a  thing  of  the  past.  For  Whinnie, 
who  is  an  old-time  miner  and  stampeder,  is,  I'm  afraid, 
a  wee  bit  gone  in  the  upper  story.  He  dreams  he  has 
a  claim  up  North  where  there's  millions  and  millions  in 
gold  to  be  dug  out.  On  his  moose-hide  watch-guard  he 
wears  a  nugget  almost  half  as  big  as  a  praline,  a  nug 
get  he  found  himself  in  ninety-nine,  and  he'd  part  with 
his  life,  I  believe,  before  he'd  part  with  that  bangle  of 
shiny  yellow  metal.  In  his  chest  of  black-oak,  too, 
he  keeps  a  package  of  greasy  and  dog-eared  docu 
ments,  and  some  day,  he  proclaims,  those  papers  will 
bring  him  into  millions  of  money. 

I  asked  Dinky-Dunk  about  the  nugget,  and  he  says 
it's  genuine  gold,  without  a  doubt.  He  also  says 
there's  one  chance  in  a  hundred  of  Whinnie  actually 


60 


having  a  claim  up  in  the  gold  country,  but  doubts  if 
the  poor  old  fellow  will  ever  get  up  to  it  again.  It's 
about  on  the  same  footing,  apparently,  as  Uncle  Carl- 
ton's  Chilean  nitrate  mines.  For  Whinnie  had  a  foot 
frozen,  his  third  winter  on  the  Yukon,  and  this,  of 
course,  has  left  him  lame.  It  means  that  he's  not  a 
great  deal  of  good  when  it  comes  to  working  the  land, 
but  he's  a  clever  carpenter,  and  a  good  cement -worker, 
and  can  chore  about  milking  the  cows  and  looking 
after  the  stock  and  repairing  the  farm  implements. 
Many  a  night,  after  supper,  he  tells  us  about  the 
Klondike  in  the  old  days,  about  the  stampedes  of  nine 
ty-eight  and  ninety-nine,  and  the  dance-halls  and 
hardships  and  gamblers  and  claim-jumpers.  I  have 
always  had  a  weakness  for  him  because  of  his  blind 
and  unshakable  love  for  my  little  Dinkie,  for  whom  he 
whittles  out  ships  and  windmills  and  decoy-ducks. 
But  when  I  explained  things  to  simple-minded  old 
Whinnie,  and  he  offered  to  hand  over  the  last  of  his 
ready  money — the  money  he  was  hoarding  dollar  by 
dollar  to  get  back  to  his  hidden  El  Dorado — it  brought 
a  lump  up  into  my  throat. 

I  couldn't  accept  his  offer,  of  course,  but  I  loved 
him  for  making  it.  And  whatever  happens,  I'm  going 
to  see  that  Whinnie  has  patches  on  his  panties  and  no 
holes  in  his  socks  as  long  as  he  abides  beneath  our 
humble  roof-tree.  I  intend  to  make  the  new  bunk- 
house  just  as  homy  and  comfortable  as  I  can,  so  that 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  6X 

Whinnie,  under  that  new  roof,  won't  feel  that  he's 
been  thrust  out  in  the  cold.  But  I  must  have  my  own 
house  for  myself  and  my  babes.  Soapy  Stennet,  by 
the  way,  has  been  paid  off  by  Dinky-Dunk  and  is  mov 
ing  on  to  the  Knee-Hill  country,  where  he  says  he  can 
get  good  wages  breaking  and  seeding.  Soapy,  of 
course,  was  a  good  man  on  the  land,  but  I  never  took 
a  shine  to  that  hard-eyed  Canuck,  and  we'll  get  along, 
in  some  way  or  other,  without  him.  For,  in  the  Ian- 
gauge  of  the  noble  Horatius,  "I'll  find  a  way,  or  make 
it!" 

On  the  way  back  to  Casa  Grande  to-night,  after  a 
hard  day's  work,  I  asked  Dinky-Dunk  if  we  wouldn't 
need  some  sort  of  garage  over  at  the  Harris  Ranch, 
to  house  our  automobile.  He  said  he'd  probably  put 
doors  on  the  end  of  one  of  the  portable  granaries  and 
use  that.  When  I  questioned  if  a  car  of  that  size 
would  ever  fit  into  a  granary  he  informed  me  that  we 
couldn't  keep  our  big  car. 

"I  can  get  seventeen  hundred  dollars  for  that  boat," 
he  explained.  "We'll  have  to  be  satisfied  with  a  tin 
Lizzie,  and  squander  less  on  gasoline." 

So  once  again  am  I  reminded  that  the  unpardon 
able  crime  of  poverty  is  not  always  picturesque.  But 
I  wrestled  with  my  soul  then  and  there,  and  put  my 
pride  in  my  pocket  and  told  Dinky-Dunk  I  didn't 
give  a  rip  what  kind  of  a  car  I  rode  in  so  long  as  I 
had  such  a  handsome  chauffeur.  And  I  reached  out 


62  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

and  patted  him  on  the  knee,  but  he  was  too  deep  in  his 
worries  about  business  matters,  I  suppose,  to  pay  any 
attention  to  that  unseemly  advance. 

To-night  after  supper,  when  the  bairns  were  safely 
in  bed,  I  opened  up  the  baby  grand,  intent  on  dying 
game,  whatever  happened  or  was  to  happen.  But  my 
concert  wasn't  much  of  a  success.  When  you  do  a 
thing  for  the  last  time,  and  know  it's  to  be  the  last 
time,  it  gives  you  a  graveyardy  sort  of  feeling,  no 
matter  how  you  may  struggle  against  it.  And  the 
blither  the  tune  the  heavier  it  seemed  to  make  my  heart. 
So  I  swung  back  to  the  statelier  things  that  have  come 
down  to  us  out  of  the  cool  and  quiet  of  Time.  I  eased 
my  soul  with  the  Sonata  Appassionato,  and  lost  my 
self  in  the  Moonlight  and  pounded  out  the  Eroica. 
But  my  fingers  were  stiff  and  my  touch  was  wooden — • 
so  it  was  small  wonder  my  poor  lord  and  master 
tried  to  bury  himself  in  his  four-day-old  newspaper. 
Then  I  tried  Schubert's  Rosamonde,  though  that 
wasn't  much  of  a  success.  So  I  wandered  on  through 
Liszt  to  Chopin.  And  even  Chopin  struck  me  as  too 
soft  and  sugary  and  far-away  for  a  homesteader's 
wife,  so  I  sang 

"In  the  dead  av  the  night,  acushla, 
When  the  new  big  house  is  still," — 

to  see  if  it  would  shake  any  sign  of  recognition  out 
of  my  harried  old  Dinky-Dunk, 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  63 

As  I  beheld  nothing1  more  than  an  abstracted  frown 
over  the  tip-top  edge  of  his  paper,  I  defiantly  swung 
into  The  Humming  Coon,  which  apparently  had  no 
more  effect  than  Herman  Lohr.  So  with  malice  afore 
thought  I  slowly  and  deliberately  pounded  out  the 
Beethoven  Funeral  March.  I  lost  myself,  in  fact,  in 
that  glorious  and  melodic  wail  of  sorrow,  merged  my 
own  puny  troubles  in  its  god-like  immensities,  and  was 
brought  down  to  earth  by  a  sudden  movement  from 
Dinky-Dunk. 

"Why  rub  it  in?"  he  almost  angrily  demanded  as 
he  got  up  and  left  the  room.  .  .  . 

But  that  stammering  little  soul-flight  has  done  me 
good.  It  has  given  me  back  my  perspective.  I  re 
fuse  to  be  downed.  I'm  still  the  captain  of  my  soul. 
I'm  still  at  the  wheel,  no  matter  if  we  are  rolling  a  bit. 
And  life,  in  some  way,  is  still  going  to  be  good,  still 
well  worth  the  living ! 


Wednesday  the  Eighth 

DINKY-DUNK  has  had  word  that  Lady  Alicia  is  on 
her  way  west.  He  seems  to  regard  that  event  as  some 
thing  very  solemn,  but  I  refuse  to  take  seriously  either 
her  ladyship  or  her  arrival.  To-night,  I'm  more  wor- 
riefl  about  Dinkie,  who  got  at  the  floor-shellac  with 
which  I'd  been  furbishing  up  the  bathroom  at  Casa 
Grande.  He  succeeded  in  giving  his  face  and  hair  a 
very  generous  coat  of  it — and  I'm  hoping  against 
hope  he  didn't  get  too  much  of  it  in  his  little  stomach. 
He  seems  normal  enough,  and  in  fairly  good  spirits, 
but  I  had  to  scrub  his  face  with  coal-oil,  to  get  it  clean, 
and  his  poor  little  baby-skin  is  burnt  rather  pink. 

The  winter  has  broken,  the  frost  is  coming  out  of 
the  ground  and  the  mud  is  not  adding  to  our  joy  in 
life.  Our  last  load  over  to  the  Harris  shack  was  fer 
ried  and  tooled  through  a  batter.  On  the  top  of  it 
(the  load,  and  not  the  batter!)  I  placed  Olie's  old 
banjo,  for  whatever  happens,  we  mustn't  be  entirely 
without  music. 

Yesterday  Dinky-Dunk  got  Paddy  saddled  and 
bridled  for  me.  Paddy  bucked  and  bit  and  bolted  and 
sulked  and  tried  to  brush  his  rider  off  against  the 
corral  posts.  But  Dinky-Dunk  fought  it  out  with 

64 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  65 

him,  and  winded  him,  and  mastered  him,  and  made  him 
meek  enough  for  me  to  slip  up  into  the  saddle.  My 
riding  muscles,  however,  have  gone  flabby,  and  two  or 
three  miles,  for  the  first  venture,  was  all  I  cared  to 
stand.  But  I'm  glad  to  know  that  Paddy  can  be 
pressed  into  service  again,  whenever  the  occasion 
arises.  Poor  old  Bobs,  by  the  way,  keeps  looking  at 
me  with  a  troubled  and  questioning  eye.  He  seems  to 
know  that  some  unsettling  and  untoward  event  is  on 
the  way.  When  a  coyote  howled  last  night,  far  off 
on  the  sky-line,  Bobs  poured  out  his  soul  in  an  an 
swering  solo  of  misery.  This  morning,  when  I  was 
pretty  busy,  he  poked  his  head  between  my  knees. 
I  had  a  dozen  things  calling  me,  but  I  took  the  time 
to  rub  his  nose  and  brush  back  his  ears  and  tell  him 
he  was  the  grandest  old  dog  on  all  God's  green  earth. 
And  he  repaid  me  with  a  look  of  adoration  that  put 
springs  under  my  heels  for  the  rest  of  the  morning, 
and  came  and  licked  Pee-Wee's  bare  heels,  and  later 
Poppsy's,  when  I  was  giving  them  their  bath. 


Friday  the  Tenth 

i 
LADY    ALICIA    has  arrived.     So  have  her  trunks, 

eleven  in  number  — count  'em ! —  trunks  of  queer  sizes 
and  shapes,  of  pigskin  and  patent  leather  and  canvas, 
with  gigantic  buckles  and  straps,  and  all  gaudily 
initialed  and  plastered  with  foreign  labels.  Her  lady 
ship  had  to  corne,  of  course,  at  the  very  worst  time 
of  year,  when  the  mud  was  at  its  muckiest  and  the 
prairie  was  at  its  worst.  The  trails  were  simply 
awful,  with  the  last  of  the  frost  coming  out  of  the 
ground  and  mother  earth  a  foot-deep  sponge  of  en 
gulfing  stickiness.  All  the  world  seemed  turned  to 
mud.  I  couldn't  go  along,  of  course,  when  Dinky- 
Dunk  started  off  in  the  Teetzels'  borrowed  spring 
"democrat"  to  meet  his  English  cousin  at  the  Buck- 
horn  station,  with  Whinstane  Sandy  and  the  wagon 
trailing  behind  for  the  luggage. 

We  expected  a  lady  in  somewhat  delicate  health, 
so  I  sent  along  plenty  of  rugs  and  a  foot-warmer, 
and  saw  that  the  house  was  well  heated,  and  the  west 
room  bed  turned  down.  Even  a  hot-water  bottle  stood 
ready  and  waiting  to  be  filled. 

But  Lady  Alicia,  when  she   arrived  with  Dinky- 

66 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  67 

Dunk  just  before  nightfall,  didn't  impress  me  as 
very  much  of  an  invalid.  She  struck  me  more  as  a 
very  vital  and  audacious  woman,  neither  young  nor 
old,  with  an  odd  quietness  of  manner  to  give  a  saber- 
edge  to  her  audacity.  I  could  hear  her  laughing, 
musically  and  not  unpleasantly,  at  the  mud-coated 
"democrat,"  which  on  its  return  looked  a  good  deal 
like  a  'dobe  hut  mounted  on  four  chariot  wheels.  But 
everything,  for  that  matter,  was  covered  with  mud, 
horses  and  harness  and  robes  and  even  the  blanket 
in  which  Lady  Alicia  had  wrapped  herself.  She  had 
done  this,  I  could  see,  to  give  decent  protection  to  a 
Redfern  coat  of  plucked  beaver  with  immense  reveres, 
though  there  was  mud  enough  on  her  stout  tan  shoes, 
so  unmistakably  English  in  their  common-sense  so 
lidity,  and  some  on  her  fur  turban  and  even  a  splash 
or  two  on  her  face.  That  face,  by  the  way,  has  an 
apple-blossom  skin  of  which  I  can  see  she  is  justly 
proud.  And  she  has  tourmaline  eyes,  with  reddish 
hazel  specks  in  an  iris  of  opaque  blue,  and  small  white 
teeth  and  lips  with  a  telltale  curve  of  wilfulness  about 
them.  She  isn't  exactly  girlish,  but  with  all  her 
worldly  wisdom  she  has  a  touch  of  the  clinging-ivy 
type  which  must  make  her  inordinately  appealing  to 
men.  Her  voice  is  soft  and  full-voweled,  with  that 
habitual  rising  inflection  characteristic  of  the  Eng 
lish,  and  that  rather  insolent  drawl  which  in  her  native 
land  seems  the  final  flower  of  unchallenged  privilege. 


68  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

Her  hands  are  very  white  and  fastidious  looking,  and 
most  carefully  manicured.  She  is,  in  fact,  wonder 
ful  in  many  ways,  but  I  haven't  yet  decided  whether 
I'm  going  to  like  her  or  not.  Her  smile  strikes  me 
as  having  more  glitter  than  warmth,  and  although  she 
is  neither  tall  nor  full-bodied,  she  seems  to  have  the 
power  of  making  point  take  the  place  of  weight.  Yet, 
oddly  enough,  there  is  an  occasional  air  of  masculine 
loose-jointedness  about  her  movements,  a  half -defiant 
sort  of  slouch  and  swagger  which  would  probably 
carry  much  farther  in  her  Old  World  than  in  our 
easier-moving  New  World,  where  disdain  of  decorum 
can  not  be  regarded  as  quite  such  a  novelty. 

It  wasn't  until  she  was  within  the  protecting  door 
of  Casa  Grande  that  I  woke  up  to  the  fact  of  how 
incongruous  she  stood  on  a  northwest  ranch.  She 
struck  me,  then,  as  distinctly  an  urban  product,  as 
one  of  those  lazy  and  silk-lined  and  limousiny  sort 
of  women  who  could  face  an  upholstery  endurance- 
test  without  any  apparent  signs  of  heart-failure,  but 
might  be  apt  to  fall  down  on  engine-performance. 
Yet  I  was  determined  to  suspend  all  judgment,  even 
after  I  could  see  that  she  was  making  no  particular 
effort  to  meet  me  half-way,  though  she  did  acknowl 
edge  that  Dinkie,  in  his  best  bib  and  tucker,  was  a 
"dawling"  and  even  proclaimed  that  his  complexion 
—  due,  of  course,  to  the  floor-shellac  and  coal-oil  — 
reminded  her  very  much  of  the  higher-colored  English 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  69 

children.  She  also  dutifully  asked  about  Poppsy  and 
Pee- Wee,  after  announcing  that  she  found  the  house 
uncomfortably  hot,  and  seemed  surprised  that  Dinky- 
Dunk  should  descend  to  the  stabling  and  feeding  and 
watering  of  his  own  horses. 

She  appeared  rather  constrained  and  ill-at-ease,  in 
fact,  until  DnnVy-Dunk  had  washed  up  and  joined  us. 
Yet  I  saw,  when  we  sat  down  to  our  belated  supper, 
that  the  fair  Allie  had  the  abundant  and  honest  appe 
tite  of  a  healthy  boy.  She  also  asked  if  she  might 
smoke  between  courses — which  same  worried  the  un 
happy  Dinky-Dunk  much  more  than  it  did  me.  My 
risibilities  remained  untouched  until  she  languidly  re 
marked  that  any  woman  who  had  twins  on  the  prairie 
ought  to  get  a  V.  C. 

But  she  automatically  became,  I  retorted,  a  K.  C.  B. 
This  seemed  to  puzzle  the  cool-eyed  Lady  Alicia. 

"That  means  a  Knight  Commander  of  the  Bath,'* 
she  said  with  her  English  literalness. 

"Exactly,"  I  agreed.  And  Dinky-Dunk  had  to 
come  to  her  rescue  and  explain  the  joke,  like  a  court- 
interpreter  translating  Cree  to  the  circuit  judge,  so 
that  by  the  time  he  got  through  it  didn't  seem  a  joke 
at  all  and  his  eyes  were  flashing  me  a  code-signal  not 
to  be  too  hard  on  a  tenderfoot.  When,  later  on,  Lady 
Alicia  looked  about  Casa  Grande,  which  we'd  toiled 
and  moiled  and  slaved  to  make  like  the  homestead 
prints  in  the  immigration  pamphlets,  she  languidly 


70  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

acknowledged  that  it  was  rather  ducky,  whatever  that 
may  mean,  and  asked  Dinky-Dunk  if  there'd  be  any 
deer-shooting  this  spring.  I  notice,  by  the  way,  that 
she  calls  him  "Dooncan"  and  sometimes  "Cousin 
Doonk,"  which  strikes  me  as  being  over-intimate,  see 
ing  he's  really  her  second  cousin.  It  seems  suggestive 
of  some  hidden  joke  between  them.  And  Duncan 
addresses  her  quite  openly  as  "Allie." 

This  same  Allie  has  brought  a  lady's  maid  with  her 
whom  she  addresses,  more  Anglico,  simply  by  her  sur 
name  of  "Struthers."  Struthers  is  a  submerged  and 
self-obliterating  and  patient-eyed  woman  of  nearly 
forty,  I  should  say,  with  a  face  that  would  be  both 
intelligent  and  attractive,  if  it  weren't  so  subservient. 
But  I've  a  floaty  sort  of  feeling  that  this  same  maid 
knows  a  little  more  than  she  lets  on  to  know,  and  I'm 
wondering  what  western  life  will  do  to  her.  In  one 
year's  time,  I'll  wager  a  plugged  nickel  against  an 
English  sovereign,  she'll  not  be  sedately  and  patiently 
dining  at  second-table  and  murmuring  "Yes,  me 
Lady"  in  that  meek  and  obedient  manner.  But  it 
fairly  took  my  breathj  the  adroit  and  expeditious 
manner  in  which  Struthers  had  that  welter  of  luggage 
unstrapped  and  unbuckled  and  warped  into  place  and 
things  stowed  away,  even  down  to  her  ladyship's 
rather  ridiculous  folding  canvas  bathtub.  In  little 
more  than  two  shakes  she  had  a  shimmering  litter  of 
toilet  things  out  on  the  dresser  tops,  and  even  a  nickel 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  71 

alcohol-lamp  set  up  for  brewing  the  apparently  essen 
tial  cup  of  tea.  It  made  me  wish  that  I  had  a 
Struthers  or  two  of  my  own  on  the  string.  And  that 
made  my  thoughts  go  hurtling  back  to  my  old 
Hortense  and  how  we  had  parted  at  the  Hotel  de 
L'Athenee,  and  to  Theobald  Gustav  and  his  aunt  the 
Baroness,  and  the  old  lost  life  that  seemed  such  years 
and  years  away. 

But  I  promptly  put  the  lid  down  on  those  over- 
disturbing  reminiscences.  There  should  be  no  post 
mortems  in  this  family  circle,  no  jeremiads  over  what 
has  gone  before.  This  is  the  New  World  and  the 
new  age  where  life  is  too  crowded  for  regrets.  I  am 
a  woman  twenty-seven  years  old,  married  and  the 
mother  of  three  children.  I  am  the  wife  of  a  rancher 
who  went  bust  in  a  land-boom  and  is  compelled  to 
start  life  over  again.  I  must  stand  beside  him,  and 
start  from  the  bottom.  I  must  also  carry  along  with 
me  all  the  hopes  and  prospects  of  three  small  lives. 
This,  however,  is  something  which  I  refuse  to  accept 
as  a  burden  and  a  handicap.  It  is  a  weight  attached 
to  me,  of  course,  but  it's  only  the  stabilizing  weight 
which  the  tail  contributes  to  the  kite,  allowing  it,  in 
the  end,  to  fly  higher  and  keep  steadier.  It  won't 
seem  hard  to  do  without  things,  when  I  think  of  those 
kiddies  of  mine,  and  hard  work  should  be  a  great  and 
glorious  gift,  if  it  is  to  give  them  the  start  in  life 
which  they  deserve.  We'll  no  longer  quarrel,  Diddums 


72  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

and  I,  about  whether  Dinkie  shall  go  to  Harvard  or 
McGill.  There'll  be  much  closer  problems  than  that, 
I  imagine,  before  Dinkie  is  out  of  his  knickers.  Fate 
has  shaken  us  down  to  realities — and  my  present  per 
plexity  is  to  get  possession  of  six  new  milk-pans  and 
that  new  barrel-churn,  not  to  mention  the  flannelette 
I  simply  must  have  for  the  Twins*  new  nighties ! 


Saturday  the  Eleventh 

THESE  imperturbable  English!  I  didn't  know 
whether  I  should  take  off  my  hat  to  'em  or  despise 
'em.  They  seem  to  come  out  of  a  different  mold  to 
what  we  Americans  do.  Lady  Alicia  takes  everything 
as  a  matter  of  course.  She  seems  to  have  accepted 
one  of  the  finest  ranches  west  of  the  Peg  as  impas 
sively  as  an  old  work-horse  accepts  a  new  shoe.  Even 
the  immensity  of  our  western  prairie-land  hasn't  quite 
stumped  her.  She  acknowledged  that  Casa  Grande 
was  "quaint,'1  and  is  obviously  much  more  interested 
in  Iroquois  Annie,  the  latter  being  partly  a  Redskin, 
than  in  my  humble  self.  I  went  up  in  her  estimation 
a  little,  however,  when  I  coolly  accepted  one  of  her 
cigarettes,  of  which  she  has  brought  enough  to 
asphyxiate  an  army.  I  managed  it  all  right,  though 
it  was  nearly  four  long  years  since  I'd  flicked  the  ash 
off  the  end  of  one — in  Chinkie's  yacht  going  up  to 
Monte  Carlo.  But  I  was  glad  enough  to  drop  the 
bigger  half  of  it  quietly  into  my  nasturtium  window- 
box,  when  the  lady  wasn't  looking. 

The  lady  in  question,  by  the  way,  seems  rather  dis 
appointed  to  find  that  Casa  Grande  has  what  she 
called  "central  heating."  About  the  middle  of  next 

73 


February,  when  the  thermometer  is  flirting  with  the 
forty-below  mark,  she  may  change  her  mind.  I  sup 
pose  the  lady  expected  to  get  a  lodge  and  a  deer-park 
along  with  her  new  home,  to  say  nothing  of  a  picture 
'all — open  to  the  public  on  Fridays,  admission  one 
shilling — and  a  family  ghost,  and,  of  course,  a  terrace 
for  the  aforesaid  ghost  to  ambulate  along  on  moon 
light  nights. 

But  the  thing  that's  been  troubling  me,  all  day 
long,  is:  Now  that  Lady  Alicia  has  got  her  hand 
made  ranch,  what's  she  going  to  do  with  it?  I 
scarcely  expect  her  to  take  me  into  her  confidence  on 
the  matter,  since  she  seems  intent  on  regarding  me 
as  merely  a  bit  of  the  landscape.  The  disturbing 
part  of  it  all  is  that  her  aloofness  is  so  unstudied,  so 
indifferent  in  its  lack  of  deliberation.  It  makes  me 
feel  like  a  bump  on  a  log.  I  shouldn't  so  much  mind 
being  actively  and  martially  snubbed,  for  that  would 
give  me  something  definite  and  tangible  to  grow 
combative  over.  But  you  can't  cross  swords  with  a 
Scotch  mist. 

With  Dinky-Dunk  her  ladyship  is  quite  different. 
I  never  see  that  look  of  mild  impatience  in  her 
opaque  blue  eyes  when  he  is  talking.  She  flatters  him 
openly,  in  fact,  and  a  man  takes  to  flattery,  of  course, 
as  a  kitten  takes  to  cream.  Yet  with  all  her  out 
spokenness  I  am  conscious  of  a  tremendous  sense  of 
reservation.  Already,  more  than  once,  she  has  given 


75 


Tfie  a  feeling  which  I'd  find  it  very  hard  to  describe, 
a  feeling  as  though  we  were  being  suspended  over 
peril  by  something  very  fragile.  It's  the  feeling  you 
have  when  you  stand  on  one  of  those  frail  little  Alpine 
bridges  that  can  sway  so  forebodingly  with  your  own 
weight  and  remind  you  that  nothing  but  a  rustic  pal 
ing  or  two  separates  you  from  the  thousand-footed 
abysses  below  your  heels. 

But  I  mustn't  paint  the  new  mistress  of  Casa 
Grande  all  in  dark  colors.  She  has  her  good  points, 
and  a  mind  of  her  own,  and  a  thought  or  two  of  her 
own.  Dinky-Dunk  was  asking  her  about  Egypt. 
That  country,  she  retorted,  was  too  dead  for  her.  She 
couldn't  wipe  out  of  her  heart  the  memory  of  what 
man  had  suffered  along  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  during 
the  last  four  thousand  years,  what  millions  of  men 
had  suffered  there  because  of  religion  and  war  and 
caste. 

"I  could  never  be  happy  in  a  country  of  dead  races 
and  dead  creeds  and  dead  cities/'  protested  Lady 
Alicia,  with  more  emotion  than  I  had  expected.  "And 
those  are  the  things  that  always  stare  me  in  the  face 
out  there." 

This  brought  the  talk  around  to  the  New  World. 

"I  rather  fancy  that  a  climate  like  yours  up  here," 
she  coolly  observed,  "would  make  luxuries  of  fur 
niture  and  dress,  and  convert  what  should  be  the  ac 
cidents  of  life  into  essentials.  You  will  always  have 


76  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

to  fight  against  nature,  you  know,  and  that  makes 
man  attach  more  importance  to  the  quest  of  comfort. 
But  "when  he  lives  in  the  tropics,  in  a  surrounding 
that  leaves  him  with  few  desires,  he  has  time  to  sit 
down  and  think  about  his  soul.  That's  why  you  can 
never  have  a  great  musician  or  a  great  poet  in  your 
land  of  blizzards,  Cousin  Dooncan.  You  are  all  kept 
too  busy  laying  up  nuts  for  the  winter.  You  can't 
afford  to  turn  gipsy  and  go  off  star-gazing." 

"You  can  if  you  join  the  I.  W.  W.,"  I  retorted. 
But  the  allusion  was  lost  on  her. 

"I  can't  imagine  a  Shelley  or  a  Theocritus  up  here 
on  your  prairie,"  she  went  on,  "or  a  Marcus  Aurelius 
in  the  real-estate  business  in  Winnipeg." 

Dinky-Dunk  was  able  to  smile  at  this,  though  I 
wasn't. 

"But  we  have  the  glory  of  doing  things,"  I  con 
tended,  "and  somebody,  I  believe,  has  summed  up  your 
Marcus  Aurelius  by  saying  he  left  behind  him  a  couple 
of  beautiful  books,  an  execrable  son,  and  a  decaying 
nation.  And  we  don't  intend  to  decay!  We  don't 
live  for  the  moment,  it's  true.  But  we  live  for  To 
morrow.  We  write  epics  in  railway  lines,  and  instead 
of  working  out  sonnets  we  build  new  cities,  and  instead 
of  sitting  down  under  a  palm-tree  and  twiddling  our 
thumbs  we  turn  a  wilderness  into  a  new  nation,  and 
grow  grain  and  give  bread  to  the  hungry  world  where 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  77 

the  gipsies  don't  seem  quite  able  to  make  both  ends 
meet !" 

I  had  my  say  out,  and  Lady  Alicia  sat  looking  at 
me  with  a  sort  of  mild  and  impersonal  surprise.  But 
she  declined  to  argue  about  it  all.  And  it  was  just  as 
well  she  didn't,  I  suppose,  for  I  had  my  Irish  up  and 
didn't  intend  to  sit  back  and  see  my  country  maligned. 

But  on  the  way  home  to  the  Harris  Ranch  last 
night,  with  Dinky-Dunk  silent  and  thoughtful,  and  a 
cold  star  or  two  in  the  high-arching  heavens  over  us, 
I  found  that  my  little  fire  of  enthusiasm  had  burnt 
itself  out  and  those  crazy  lines  of  John  Davidson  kept 
returning  to  my  mind : 

"After  the  end  of  all  things, 
After  the  years  are  spent, 
After  the  loom  is  broken, 
After  the  robe  is  rent, 
Will  there  be  hearts  a-beating, 
Will  friend  converse  with  friend, 
Will  men  and  women  be  lovers, 
After  the  end?" 

I  felt  very  much  alone  in  the  world,  and  about  as 
cheerful  as  a  moonstruck  coyote,  after  those  lines 
had  rattled  in  my  empty  brain  like  a  skeleton  in  the 
wind.  It  wasn't  until  I  saw  the  light  in  our  wickiup 
window  and  heard  Bobs'  bay  of  welcome  through  the 
crystal-clear  twilight  that  the  leaden  weight  of  desola- 


78  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

tion  slipped  off  the  ledge  of  my  heart.  But  as  I 
heard  that  deep-noted  bark  of  gladness,  that  friendly 
intimation  of  guardianship  unrelaxed  and  untiring, 
I  remembered  that  I  had  one  faithful  and  unexacting 
friend,  even  though  it  was  nothing  better  than  a  dog. 


Sunday  the  Twelfth 

DINKY-DUNK  rather  surprised  me  to-day  by  asking 
why  I  was  so  stand-offish  with  his  Cousin  Allie.  I  told 
him  that  I  wasn't  in  the  habit  of  curling  up  like  a 
kitten  on  a  slab  of  Polar  ice. 

"But  she  really  likes  you,  Tabbie,"  my  husband 
protested.  "She  wants  to  know  you  and  understand 
you.  Only  you  keep  intimidating  her,  and  placing 
her  at  a  disadvantage." 

This  was  news  to  me.  Lady  Alicia,  I'd  imagined, 
stood  in  awe  of  nothing  on  the  earth  beneath  nor  the 
heavens  above.  She  can  speak  very  sharply,  I've  al 
ready  noticed,  to  Struthers,  when  the  occasion  arises. 
And  she's  been  very  calm  and  deliberate,  as  I've  al 
ready  observed,  in  her  manner  of  taking  over  Casa 
Grande.  For  she  has  formally  taken  it  over,  Dinky- 
Dunk  tells  me,  and  in  a  day  or  two  we  all  have  to 
trek  to  town  for  the  signing  of  the  papers.  She  is, 
apparently,  going  to  run  the  ranch  on  her  own  hook, 
and  in  her  own  way.  It  will  be  well  worth  watching. 

I  was  rather  anxious  to  hear  the  particulars  of  the 
transfer  to  Lady  Allie,  but  Dinky-Dunk  seemed  a 
little  reluctant  to  go  into  details,  and  I  didn't  intend  to 

79 


80  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

make  a  parade  of  my  curiosity.  I  can  bide  my  time. 
.  .  Yesterday  I  put  on  my  old  riding-suit,  sad 
dled  Paddy,  fed  the  Twins  to  their  last  mouthful,  and 
went  galloping1  off  through  the  mud  to  help  bring  the 
cattle  over  to  the  Harris  Ranch.  I  was  a  sight,  in 
that  weather-stained  old  suit  and  ragged  toppers,  even 
before  I  got  freckled  and  splashed  with  prairie-mud. 
I  was  standing  up  in  the  stirrups  laughing  at  Fran 
cois,  who'd  had  a  bad  slip  and  fallen  in  a  puddle  just 
back  of  our  old  corral,  when  her  Ladyship  came  out. 
She  must  have  taken  me  for  a  drunken  cowboy  who'd 
rolled  into  a  sheep-dip,  for  my  nose  was  red  and  my 
old  Stetson  sombrero  was  crooked  on  the  back  of  my 
head  and  even  my  hair  was  caked  with  mud.  She 
called  to  me,  rather  imperiously,  so  I  went  stamped 
ing  up  to  her,  and  let  Paddy  indulge  in  that  theatrical 
stop-slide  of  his,  on  his  haunches,  so  that  it  wasn't 
until  his  nose  was  within  two  feet  of  her  own  that 
she  could  be  quite  sure  she  wasn't  about  to  be  run 
down. 

Her  eyes  popped  a  little  when  she  saw  it  was  a 
woman  on  Paddy,  though  she'd  refused  to  show  a  trace 
of  fear  when  we  went  avalanching  down  on  her.  Then 
she  studied  my  get-up. 

"I  should  rather  like  to  ride  that  way,"  she  coolly 
announced. 

"It's  the  only  way,"  I  told  her,  making  Paddy 
pirouette  by  pressing  a  heel  against  his  short-ribs. 


81 


She  meant,  of  course,  riding  astride,  which  must  have 
struck  her  as  the  final  word  in  audacity. 

"I  like  your  pony,"  next  remarked  Lady  Alicia, 
with  a  somewhat  wistful  intonation  in  her  voice. 

"He's  a  brick,"  I  acknowledged.  Then  I  swung 
about  to  help  Francois  head  off  a  bunch  of  rampaging 
steers.  "Come  and  see  us,"  I  called  back  over  my 
shoulder.  If  Lady  Alicia  answered,  I  didn't  have  time 
to  catch  what  she  said. 

But  that  romp  on  Paddy  has  done  me  good.  It 
shook  the  solemnity  out  of  me.  I've  just  decided 
that  I'm  not  going  to  surrender  to  this  middle-aged 
Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire  stuff  before  my  time.  I'm  go 
ing  to  refuse  to  grow  old  and  poky.  I'm  going  to 
keep  the  spark  alive,  the  sacred  spark  of  youth,  even 
though  folks  write  me  down  as  the  biggest  loon  west 
of  the  Dirt  Hills.  So  dear  Lord — this  is  my  prayer — 
whatever  You  do  to  me,  keep  me  alive.  O  God,  don't 
let  me,  in  Thy  divine  mercy,  be  a  Dead  One.  Don'L 
let  me  be  a  soured  woman  with  a  self -murdered  soul. 
Keep  the  wine  of  youth  in  my  body  and  the  hope  of 
happiness  in  my  heart.  Yea,  permit  me  deeply  to  live 
and  love  and  laugh,  so  that  youth  may  abide  in  my 
bones,  even  as  it  did  in  that  once-renowned  Duchess 
of  Lienster, 

Who  lived  to  the  age  of  a  hundred  and  ten, 
To  die  of  a  fall  from  a  cherry-tree  then ! 


82  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

My  poor  old  Dinky-Dunk,  by  the  way,  meanders 
about  these  days  so  moody  and  morose  it's  beginning 
to  disturb  me.  He's  at  the  end  of  his  string,  and 
picked  clean  to  the  bone,  and  I'm  beginning  to  see 
that  it's  my  duty  to  buoy  that  man  up,  to  nurse  him 
back  into  a  respectable  belief  in  himself.  His  nerves 
are  a  bit  raw,  and  he's  not  always  responsible  for  his 
manners.  The  other  night  he  came  in  tired,  and  tried 
to  read,  when  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  were  both  going 
it  like  the  Russian  Balalaika.  To  tell  the  truth,  their 
little  tummies  were  a  bit  upset,  because  the  food  pur 
veyor  had  had  too  strenuous  a  day  to  be  regular  in  her 
rounds. 

"Can't  you  keep  those  squalling  brats  quiet?" 
Dinky-Dunk  called  out  to  me.  It  came  like  a  thunder  . 
clap.  It  left  me  gasping,  to  think  that  he  could 
call  his  own  flesh  and  blood  "squalling  brats."  And 
I  was  shocked  and  hurt,  but  I  decided  not  to  show  it. 

"Will  somebody  kindly  page  Lord  Chesterfield?" 
[  quietly  remarked  as  I  went  to  the  Twins  and  wheeled 
them  out  to  the  kitchen,  where  I  gave  them  hot  pep 
permint  and  rubbed  their  backs  and  quieted  them 
down  again. 

I  suppose  there's  no  such  thing  as  a  perfect  hus 
band.  That's  a  lesson  we've  all  got  to  learn,  the  same 
as  all  children,  apparently,  have  to  find  out  that  acorns 
and  horse-chestnuts  aren't  edible.  For  the  nap  wears 
off  men  the  same  as  it  does  off  clothes.  I  dread  to 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  S3 

have  to  write  it  down,  but  I  begin  to  detect  thinnesses 
in  Dinky-Dunk,  and  a  disturbing1  little  run  or  two  in 
the  even  web  of  his  character.  But  he  knows  when  he's 
played  Indian  and  attempts  oblique  and  rather  shame 
faced  efforts  to  make  amends,  later  on,  when  it  won't 
be  too  noticeable.  Last  night,  as  I  sat  sewing,  our 
little  Dinkie  must  have  had  a  bad  dream,  for  he  wak 
ened  from  a  sound  sleep  with  a  scream  of  terror. 
Dinky-Dunk  went  to  him  first,  and  took  him  up  and 
sang  to  him,  and  when  I  glanced  in  I  saw  a  rumply 
and  tumbly  and  sleepy-eyed  tot  with  his  kinky  head 
against  his  father's  shoulder.  As  I  took  up  my  sew 
ing  again  and  heard  Dinky-Dunk  singing  to  his  son, 
it  seemed  a  proud  and  happy  and  contented  sort  of 
voice.  It  rose  and  fell  in  that  next  room,  in  a  sort 
of  droning  bass,  and  for  the  life  of  me  I  can't  tell  why, 
but  as  I  stopped  in  my  sewing  and  sat  listening  to  that 
father  singing  to  his  sleepy-eyed  first-born,  it  brought 
the  sudden  tears  to  my  eyes.  It  has  been  a  consider 
able  length  of  time,  en  passant,  since  I  found  myself 
sitting  down  and  pumping  the  brine.  I  must  be  get 
ting  hardened  in  my  old  age. 


Tuesday  the  Fourteenth 

LADY  ALIJE  sent  over  for  Dinky-Dunk  yesterday 
morning,  to  fix  the  windmill  at  Casa  Grande.  They'd 
put  it  out  of  commission  in  the  first  week,  and  emptied 
the  pressure-tank,  and  were  without  water,  and  were 
as  helpless  as  a  couple  of  canaries.  We  have  a  broken 
windmill  of  our  own,  right  here  at  home,  but  Diddums 
went  meekly  enough,  although  he  was  in  the  midst  of 
his  morning  work — and  work  is  about  to  loom  big  over 
this  ranch,  for  we're  at  last  able  to  get  on  the  land. 
And  the  sooner  you  get  on  the  land,  in  this  latitude, 
the  surer  you  are  of  your  crop.  We  daren't  shave 
down  any  margins  of  chance.  We  need  that 
crop.  .  .  . 

I  am  really  beginning  to  despair  of  Iroquois  Annie. 
She  is  the  only  thing  I  can  get  in  the  way  of  hired 
help  out  here,  and  yet  she  is  hopeless.  She  is  sullen 
and  wasteful,  and  she  has  never  yet  learned  to  be 
patient  with  the  children.  I  try  to  soften  and  placate 
her  with  the  gift  of  trinkets,  for  there  is  enough  Red 
skin  in  her  to  make  her  inordinately  proud  of  any 
thing  with  a  bit  of  flash  and  glitter  to  it.  But  she  is 
about  as  responsive  to  actual  kindness  as  a  diamond- 
back  rattler  would  be,  and  some  day,  if  she  drives 

84 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  85 

me  too  far,  I'm  going  off  at  half-cock  and  blow  that 
breed  into  mince-meat. 

By  the  way,  I  can  see  myself  writ  small  in  little 
Dinkie,  my  moods  and  waywardnesses  and  wicked  im 
pulses,  and  sudden  chinooks  of  tenderness  alternating 
with  a  perverse  sort  of  shrinking  away  from  love  it 
self,  even  when  I'm  hungering  for  it.  I  can  also 
catch  signs  of  his  pater's  masterfulness  cropping  out 
in  him.  Small  as  he  is,  he  disturbs  me  by  that  com 
bative  stare  of  his.  It's  almost  a  silent  challenge  I 
see  in  his  eyes  as  he  coolly  studies  me,  after  a  procla 
mation  that  he  will  be  spanked  if  he  repeats  a  given 
misdeed. 

I'm  beginning  to  understand  the  meaning  of  that 
very  old  phrase  about  one's  chickens  coming  home  to 
roost.  I  can  even  detect  sudden  impulses  of  cruelty 
in  little  Dinkie,  when,  young  and  tender  as  he  appears 
to  the  casual  eye,  a  quick  and  wilful  passion  to  hurt 
something  takes  possession  of  him.  Yesterday  I 
watched  him  catch  up  his  one-eyed  Teddjr  Dear,  which 
he  loves,  and  beat  its  head  against  the  shack-floor. 
Sometimes,  too,  he'll  take  possession  of  a  plate  and 
fling  it  to  the  floor  with  all  his  force,  even  though 
he  knows  such  an  act  is  surely  followed  by  punishment. 
It's  the  same  with  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee,  with  whom 
he  is  apt  to  be  over-rough,  though  his  offenses  in  that 
direction  may  still  be  touched  with  just  a  coloring  of 
childish  jealousy,  long  and  arduously  as  I  struggle 


86 


to  implant  some  trace  of  fraternal  feeling  in  his  an 
archistic  little  breast.  There  are  even  times,  after 
he's  been  hugging  my  knees  or  perhaps  stroking  my 
cheek  with  his  little  velvet  hands  and  murmuring 
"Maaa-maa !"  in  his  small  and  bird-like  coo,  when  he 
will  suddenly  turn  savage  and  try  to  bite  my  patella 
or  pull  my  ear  out  by  the  root. 

Most  of  this  cruelty,  I  think,  is  born  of  a  sheer 
excess  of  animal  spirits.  But  not  all  of  it.  Some  of 
it  is  based  on  downright  wilfulness.  I  have  seen 
him  do  without  things  he  really  wanted,  rather  than 
unbend  and  say  the  necessary  "Ta-ta"  which  stands 
for  both  "please"  and  "thanks"  in  his  still  limited 
vocabulary.  The  little  Hun  will  also  fall  on  his  pic 
ture-books,  at  times,  and  do  his  best  to  tear  the  linen 
pages  apart,  flailing  them  about  in  the  air  with  gen 
uine  Berserker  madness.  But  along  with  this,  as  I've 
already  said,  he  has  his  equally  sudden  impulses  of 
affection,  especially  when  he  first  wakens  in  the  morn 
ing  and  his  little  body  seems  to  be  singing  with  the 
pure  joy  of  living.  He'll  smooth  my  hair,  after  I've 
lifted  him  from  the  crib  into  my  bed,  and  bury  his  face 
in  the  hollow  of  my  neck  and  kiss  my  cheek  and  pat  my 
forehead  and  coo  over  me  until  I  squeeze  him  so  hard 
he  has  to  grunt.  Then  he'll  probably  do  his  best  to 
pick  my  eyes  out,  if  I  pretend  to  be  asleep,  or  experi 
ment  with  the  end  of  my  nose,  to  see  why  it  doesn't 
lift  up  like  a  door-knocker.  Then  he'll  snuggle  down 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  87 

in  the  crook  of  my  arm,  perfectly  still  except  for  the 
wriggling  of  his  toes  against  my  hip,  and  croon  there 
with  happiness  and  contentment,  like  a  ring-neck 
dove. 


Friday  the  Seventeenth 

LADY  AI/LIE  couldn't  have  been  picked  quite  clean  to 
the  bone  by  the  McKails,  for  she's  announced  her  in 
tention  of  buying  a  touring-car  and  a  gasoline-engine 
and  has  had  a  conference  with  Dinky-Dunk  on  the 
matter.  She  also  sent  to  Montreal  for  the  niftiest 
little  English  sailor  suit,  for  Dinkie,  together  with  a 
sailor  hat  that  has  "Agamemnon"  printed  in  gold 
letters  on  its  band. 

I  ought  to  be  enthusiastic  about  it,  but  I  can't. 
Dinkie  himself,  however,  who  calls  it  his  "new  nailor 
nuit" —  not  being  yet  able  to  manage  the  sibilants — 
struts  about  in  it  proud  as  a  peacock,  and  refuses  to 
sit  down  in  his  supper-chair  until  Ikkie  has  carefully 
wiped  off  the  seat  of  the  same,  to  the  end  that  the  be 
loved  nailor  nuit  might  remain  immaculate.  He'll  lose 
his  reverence  for  it,  of  course,  when  he  knows  it  better. 
It's  a  habit  men  have,  big  or  little. 

Lady  Allie  has  confessed  that  she  is  succumbing  to 
the  charm  of  prairie  life.  It  ought  to  make  her  more 
of  a  woman  and  less  of  a  silk-lined  idler.  Dinky- 
Dunk  still  nurses  the  illusion  that  she  is  delicate,  and 
manages  to  get  a  lot  of  glory  out  of  that  clinging- 
vine  pose  of  hers,  big  oak  that  he  is !  But  it  is 

88 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  89 

simply  absurd,  the  way  he  falls  for  her  flattery* 
She's  making  him  believe  that  he's  a  twentieth-century 
St.  Augustine  and  a  Saint  Christopher  all  rolled  into 
one.  Poor  old  Dinky-Dunk,  I'll  have  to  keep  an  eye 
on  him  or  they'll  be  turning  his  head,  for  all  its  gray 
hairs.  He  is  wax  in  the  hand  of  designing  beautys 
as  are  most  of  the  race  of  man.  And  the  fair  Allies 
I  must  acknowledge,  is  dangerously  appealing  to  the 
eye.  It's  no  wonder  poor  old  Dinky-Dunk  nearly 
broke  his  neck  trying  to  teach  her  to  ride  astride. 
But  I  intend  to  give  her  ladyship  an  inkling,  before 
long,  that  I'm  not  quite  so  stupid  as  I  seem  to  be. 
She  mustn't  imagine  she  can  "vamp"  my  Kaikabad 
with  impunity.  It's  a  case  of  any  port  in  a  storm,  I 
suppose,  for  she  has  to  practise  on  somebody.  But  I 
must  say  she  looks  well  on  horseback  and  can  lay 
claim  to  a  poise  that  always  exacts  its  toll  of  respect. 
She  rides  hard,  though  I  imagine  she  would  be  un 
wittingly  cruel  to  her  mount.  Yet  she  has  been  more 
offhanded  and  friendly,  the  last  two  or  three  times 
she  has  dropped  over  to  the  shack,  and  she  is  kind 
to  the  kiddies,  especially  Dinkie.  She  seems  genuinely 
and  unaffectedly  fond  of  him.  As  for  me,  she  thinks 
I'm  hard,  I  feel  sure,  and  is  secretly  studying  me — 
trying  to  decipher,  I  suppose,  what  her  sainted  cousin 
could  ever  see  in  me  to  kick  up  a  dust  about! 

Lady  Allie's  London  togs,  by  the  way,  make  me 
feel  rather  shoddy  and  slattern.     I  intend  to  swing  in 


90  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

a  little  stronger  for  personal  adornment,  as  soon  as 
we  get  things  going  again.  When  a  woman  gives  up, 
in  that  respect,  she's  surely  a  goner.  And  I  may  be 
a  hard-handed  and  slabsided  prairie  huzzy,  but  there 
was  a  time  when  I  stood  beside  the  big  palms  by  tin 
fountain  in  the  conservatory  of  Prince  Ernest  de 
Ligne's  Brussels  house  in  the  Rue  Montoyer  and  the 
Marquis  of  What-Ever-His-Name-Was  bowed  and  set 
all  the  orders  on  his  chest  shaking  when  he  kissed 
my  hand  and  proclaimed  that  I  was  the  most  beautiful 
woman  in  Belgium ! 

Yes,  there  was  such  a  time.  But  it  was  a  long, 
long  time  ago,  and  I  never  thought  then  I'd  be  a  ran 
cher's  wife  with  a  barrel-churn  to  scald  out  once  a 
week  and  a  wheezy  old  pump  to  prime  in  the  morning 
and  a  little  hanging  garden  of  Babylon  full  of  babies 
to  keep  warm  and  to  keep  fed  and  to  keep  from  falling 
on  their  boneless  little  cocos !  I  might  even  have 
married  Theobald  Gustav  von  BrockdorfF  and  turned 
into  an  embassy  ball  lizard  and  ascended  into  the  old 
family  landau  of  his  aunt  the  baroness,  to  disport 
along  the  boulevards  therein  very  much  like  an  oyster 
on  the  half-shell.  I  might  have  done  all  that,  and  I 
might  not.  But  it's  all  for  the  best,  as  the  greatest 
pessimist  who  ever  drew  the  breath  of  life  once  tried 
to  teach  in  his  Candide.  And  in  my  career,  as  I  have 
already  written,  there  shall  be  no  jeremiads. 


Sunday  the  Nineteenth 

I'VE  been  trying  to  keep  tab  on  the  Twins'  weight, 
for  it's  important  that  they  should  gain  according  to 
schedule.  But  I've  only  Dinky-Dunk's  bulky  grain- 
scales,  and  it's  impossible  to  figure  down  to  anything 
as  fine  as  ounces  or  even  quarter-pounds  on  such  a 
balancer.  Yet  my  babies,  I'm  afraid,  are  not  gaining 
as  they  ought.  Poppsy  is  especially  fretful  of  late. 
Why  can't  somebody  invent  children  without  colic, 
anyway?  I  have  a  feeling  that  I  ought  to  run  on  low 
gear  for  a  while.  But  that's  a  luxury  I  can't  quite 
afford. 

Last  night,  when  I  was  dead-tired  and  trying  to 
give  the  last  licks  to  my  day's  work  without  doing  a 
Keystone  fall  over  the  kitchen  table,  Dinky-Dunk 
said:  "Why  haven't  you  ever  given  a  name  to  this 
new  place?  They  tell  me  you  have  a  genius  for  nam 
ing  things — and  here  we  are  still  dubbing  our  home 
the  Harris  shack." 

"I  suppose  it  ought  to  be  an  Indian  name,  in  honor 
of  Ikkie?"  I  suggested,  doing  my  best  to  maintain 
an  unruffled  front.  And  Duncan  Argyll  absently 
agreed  that  it  might  just  as  well. 

"Then  what's  the  matter  with  calling  it  Alabama  ?" 
91  i 


92  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

I  mor3antly  suggested.  "For  as  I  remember  it,  that 
means  'Here  we  rest.'  And  I  can  imagine  nothing 
more  appropriate." 

I  was  half-sorry  I  said  it,  for  the  Lord  deliver  me 
always  from  a  sarcastic  woman.  But  I've  a  feeling 
that  the  name  is  going  to  stick,  whether  we  want  it 
or  not.  At  any  rate,  Alabama  Ranch  has  rather  a 
musical  turn  to  it.  ... 

I  wonder  if  there  are  any  really  perfect  children 
in  the  world?  Or  do  the  good  little  boys  and  girls 
only  belong  to  that  sentimentalized  mid-Victorian 
fiction  which  tried  so  hard  to  make  the  world  like  a 
cross  between  an  old  maid's  herb-garden  and  a  Sunday 
afternoon  in  a  London  suburb?  I  have  tried  talking 
with  little  Dinkie,  and  reasoning  with  him.  I  have 
striven  long  and  patiently  to  blow  his  little  spark  of 
conscience  into  the  active  flame  of  self -judgment. 
And  averse  as  I  am  to  cruelty  and  hardness,  much  as 
I  hate  the  humiliation  of  physical  punishment,  my 
poor  kiddie  and  I  can't  get  along  without  the  slipper. 
I  have  to  spank  him,  and  spank  him  soundly,  about 
once  a  week.  I'm  driven  to  this,  or  there'd  be  no  sleep 
nor  rest  nor  roof  about  our  heads  at  Alabama  Ranch. 
I  don't  give  a  rip  what  Barrie  may  have  written  about 
the  bringing  up  of  children — for  he  never  had  any  of 
his  own !  He  never  had  an  imperious  young  autocrat 
to  democratize.  He  never  had  a  family  to  de-barba 
rize,  even  though  he  did  write  very  pretty  books  about 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  93 

the  subject.  It's  just  another  case,  I  suppose,  where 
fiction  is  too  cowardly  or  too  finicky  to  be  truthful. 
I  had  theories  about  this  child-business  myself,  at  one 
time,  but  my  pipe  of  illusion  has  plumb  gone  out. 
It  wasn't  so  many  years  ago  that  I  imagined  about  all 
a  mother  had  to  do  was  to  dress  in  clinging  negligees, 
such  as  you  see  in  the  toilet-soap  advertisements,  and 
hold  a  spotless  little  saint  on  her  knee,  or  have  a  mirac 
ulously  docile  nurse  in  cap  and  apron  carry  in  a  little 
paragon  all  done  up  in  dotted  Swiss  and  rose-pink, 
and  pose  for  family  groups,  not  unlike  popular  prints 
of  the  royal  family  in  full  evening  dress,  on  Louis 
Quinze  settees.  And  later  on,  of  course,  one  could 
ride  out  with  a  row  of  sedate  little  princelings  at  one's 
side,  so  that  one  could  murmur,  when  the  world  mar 
veled  at  their  manners,  "It's  blood,  my  dears,  merely 
blood!" 

But  fled,  and  fled  forever,  jire  all  such  dreams. 
Dinkie  prefers  treading  on  his  bread-and-butter  before 
consuming  it,  and  does  his  best  to  consume  the  work 
ings  of  my  sewing-machine,  and  pokes  the  spoons 
down  through  the  crack  in  the  kitchen  floor,  and  be 
trays  a  weakness  for  yard-mud  and  dust  in  preference 
to  the  well-scrubbed  boards  of  the  sleeping  porch, 
which  I've  tried  to  turn  into  a  sort  of  nursery  by  day. 
Most  fiction,  I  find,  glides  lightly  over  this  eternal 
Waterloo  between  dirt  and  water — for  no  active  and 
healthy  child  is  easy  to  keep  clean.  That  is  something 


which  you  never,  never,  really  succeed  at.  All  that 
you  can  do  is  to  keep  up  the  struggle,  consoling 
yourself  with  the  memory  that  cleanness,  even  surgical 
cleanness,  is  only  an  approximation.  The  plain  every 
day  sort  of  cleanness  promptly  resolves  itself  into  a 
sort  of  neck  and  neck  race  with  dirt  and  disorder,  a 
neck  and  neck  race  with  the  soap-bar  habitually  run 
ning  second.  Sometimes  it  seems  hopeless.  For  it's 
incredible  what  can  happen  to  an  active-bodied  boy 
of  two  or  three  years  in  one  brief  but  crowded  after 
noon.  It's  equally  amazing  what  can  happen  to  a 
respectably  furnished  room  after  a  healthy  and  high- 
spirited  young  Turk  has  been  turned  loose  in  it  for  an 
hour  or  two. 

It's  a  battle,  all  right.  But  it  has  its  compensa 
tions.  It  has  to,  or  the  race  would  wither  up  like  an 
unwatered  cucumber-vine.  Who  doesn't  really  love  to 
tub  a  plump  and  dimpled  little  body  like  my  Dinkie's? 
I'm  no  petticoated  Paul  Peel,  but  I  can  see  enough 
beauty  in  the  curves  of  that  velvety  body  to  lift  it  up 
and  bite  it  on  its  promptly  protesting  little  flank. 
And  there's  unclouded  glory  in  occasionally  togging 
him  out  in  spotless  white,  and  beholding  him  as  im 
maculate  as  a  cherub,  if  only  for  one  brief  half-hour. 
It's  the  transiency  of  that  spotlessness,  I  suppose, 
which  crowns  it  with  glory.  If  he  was  forever  in  that 
condition,  we'd  be  as  indifferent  to  it  as  we  are  to  im 
mortelles  and  wax  flowers.  If  he  was  always  cherubic 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  95 

and  perfect,  I  suppose,  we'd  never  appreciate  that 
perfection  or  know  the  joy  of  triumphing1  over  the 
mother  earth  that  has  an  affinity  for  the  finest  of  us. 

But  I  do  miss  a  real  nursery,  in  more  ways  than 
one.  The  absence  of  one  gives  Dinkie  the  range  of  the 
whole  shack,  and  when  on  the  range  he's  a  timber- 
wolf  for  trouble,  and  can  annoy  his  father  even  more 
than  he  can  me  by  his  depredations.  Last  night  after 
supper  I  heard  an  icy  voice  speaking  from  the  end  of 
the  dining-room  where  Dinky-Dunk  has  installed  his 
desk. 

"Will  you  kindly  come  and  see  what  your  son  has 
done?"  my  husband  demanded,  with  a  sort  of  in-this- 
way-madness-lies  tone. 

I  stepped  in  through  the  kitchen  door,  ignoring 
the  quite  unconscious  humor  of  "my  son"  under  the 
circumstances,  and  found  that  Dinkie  had  provided  a 
novel  flavor  for  his  dad  by  emptying  the  bottle  of  ink 
into  his  brand-new  tin  of  pipe-tobacco.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  done,  of  course,  except  to  wash  as  much 
of  the  ink  as  I  could  off  Dinkie's  face.  Nor  did  I  re 
veal  to  his  father  that  three  days  before  I  had  care 
fully  compiled  a  list  of  his  son  and  heir's  misdeeds, 
for  one  round  of  the  clock.  They  were,  I  find,  as  fol 
lows  : 

Overturning  a  newly  opened  tin  of  raspberries  $ 
putting  bread-dough  in  his  ears ;  breaking  my  nail- 
buffer,  which,  however,  I  haven't  used  for  a  month 


96  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

and  more;  paring  the  bark,  with  the  bread-l^nife,  off 
the  lonely  little  scrub  poplar  near  the  kitchen  door,  our 
one  and  only  shade ;  breaking  a  drinking-glass,  which 
was  accident ;  cutting  holes  with  the  scissors  in  Ikkie's 
new  service-apron;  removing  the  covers  from  two  of 
his  father's  engineering  books;  severing  the  wire  joint 
in  my  sewing-machine  belt  (expeditiously  and  secretly 
mended  by  Whinnie,  however,  when  he  came  in  with 
the  milk-pails)  ;  emptying  what  was  left  of  my  bottle 
of  vanilla  into  the  bread  mixer ;  and  last  but  not  least, 
trying  to  swallow  and  nearly  choking  on  my  silver 
thimble,  in  which  he  seems  to  find  never-ending  dis 
appointment  .  because  it  will  not  remain  fixed  on  the 
point  of  his  nose. 

It  may  sound  like  a  busy  day,  but  it  was,  on  the 
whole,  merely  an  average  one.  Yet  I'll  wager  a 
bushel  of  number  one  Northern  winter  wheat  to  a 
doughnut  ring  that  if  Ibsen  had  written  an  epilogue 
for  The  Doll's  House,  Nora  would  have  come  crawling 
back  to  her  home  and  her  kiddies,  in  the  end. 


Wednesday  the  Twenty -second 

LADY  ALLIE  is  cither  dundcrheadcd  or  designing. 
She  has  calmly  suggested  that  her  rural  phone-line 
be  extended  from  Casa  Grande  to  Alabama  Ranch 
so  that  she  can  get  in  touch  with  Dinky-Dunk  when 
she  needs  his  help  and  guidance.  Even  as  it  is,  he's 
called  on  about  five  times  a  week,  to  run  to  the  help 
of  that  she-remittance-man  in  corduroy  and  dog-skin 
gauntlets  and  leggings. 

She  seems  thunderstruck  to  find  that  she  can't  get 
the  hired  help  she  wants,  at  a  moment's  notice.  Dinky- 
Dunk  says  she's  sure  to  be  imposed  on,  and  that  al 
though  she's  as  green  as  grass,  she's  really  anxious  to 
learn.  He  feels  that  it's  his  duty  to  stand  between  her 
and  the  outsiders  who'd  be  only  too  ready  to  impose 
on  her  ignorance. 

She  rode  over  to  see  the  Twins  yesterday,  who  were 
sleeping  out  under  the  fly-netting  I'd  draped  over 
them,  the  pink-tinted  kind  they  put  over  fruit-baskets 
in  the  city  markets  and  shops.  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee 
looked  exactly  like  two  peaches,  rosy  and  warm  and 
round. 

Lady  Allie  stared  at  them  with  rather  an  abstracted 
eye,  and  then,  idiot  that  she  is,  announced  that  she'd 

97 


98  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

like  to  have  twelve.  But  talk  is  cheap.  The  modern 
woman  who's  had  even  half  that  number  has  pretty 
well  given  up  her  life  to  her  family.  It's  remarkable, 
by  the  way,  the  silent  and  fathomless  pity  I've  come 
to  have  for  childless  women.  The  thought  of  a  fat 
spinster  fussing  over  a  French  poodle  or  a  faded 
blond  forlornly  mothering  a  Pekinese  chow  gives  me 
a  feeling  that  is  at  least  first  cousin  to  sea-sickness. 

Lady  Allie,  I  find,  has  very  fixed  and  definite  theo 
ries  as  to  the  rearing  of  children.  They  should  never 
be  rocked  or  patted,  or  be  given  a  "comfort,"  and  they 
should  be  in  bed  for  the  night  at  sundown.  There  was 
a  time  I  had  a  few  theories  of  my  own,  but  I've  pretty 
well  abandoned  them.  I've  been  taught,  in  this  re 
spect,  to  travel  light,  as  the  overland  voyageurs  of  this 
country  would  express  it,  to  travel  light  and  leave  the 
final  resort  to  instinct. 


Friday  the  Twenty -fourth 

I  WAS  lazy  last  night,  so  both  the  ink-pot  and  its 
owner  had  a  rest.  Or  perhaps  it  wasn't  so  much  laziness 
as  wilful  revolt  against  the  monotony  of  work,  for, 
after  all,  it's  not  the  'unting  as  'urts  the  'osses,  but 
the  'ammer,  'ammer,  'ammer  on  the  'ard  old  road! 
I  loafed  for  a  long  time  in  a  sort  of  sit-easy  torpor, 
with  Bobs'  head  between  my  knees  while  Dinky -Dunk 
pored  over  descriptive  catalogues  about  farm-tractors, 
for  by  hook  or  by  crook  we've  got  to  have  a  tractor  for 
Alabama  Ranch. 

"Bobs,"  I  said  after  studying  my  collie's  eyes  for 
a  good  many  minutes,  "you  are  surely  one  grand  old 
dog !" 

Whereupon  Bobs  wagged  his  tail-stump  with 
sleepy  content.  As  I  bent  lower  and  stared  closer 
into  those  humid  eyes  of  his,  it  seemed  as  though  I 
were  staring  down  into  a  bottomless  well,  through  a 
peep-hole  into  Infinity,  so  deep  and  wonderful  was 
that  eye,  that  dusky  pool  of  love  and  trust.  It  was 
like  seeing  into  the  velvet-soft  recesses  of  a  soul.  And 
I  could  stare  into  them  without  fear,  just  as  Bobs 
could  stare  back  without  shame.  That's  where  dogs 
are  slightly  different  from  men.  If  I  looked  into  a 

99 


100  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

man's  eye  like  that  he'd  either  rudely  inquire  just  what 
the  devil  I  was  gaping  at  or  he'd  want  to  ask  me  out 
to  supper  in  one  of  those  Pompeian  places  where  a 
bald-headed  waiter  serves  lobsters  in  a  chambre  partic- 
idiere. 

But  all  I  could  see  in  the  eye  of  my  sedate  old  Bobs 
was  love,  love  infinite  and  inarticulate,  love  too  big 
ever  to  be  put  into  words. 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  said,  interrupting  my  lord  and 
master  at  his  reading,  "if  God  is  really  love,  as  the 
Good  Book  says,  I  don't  see  why  they  ever  started 
talking  about  the  Lamb  of  God." 

"Why  shouldn't  they?"  asked  Diddums,  not  much 
interested. 

"Because  lambs  may  be  artless  and  innocent  little 
things,  but  when  you've  got  their  innocence  you've 
got  about  everything.  They're  not  the  least  bit  in 
telligent,  and  they're  self-centered  and  self-immured. 
Now,  with  dogs  it's  different.  Dogs  love  you  and 
guard  j'ou  and  ache  to  serve  you."  And  I  couldn't 
help  stopping  to  think  about  the  dogs  I'd  known  and 
loved,  the  dogs  who  once  meant  so  much  in  my  life: 
Chinkie's  Bingo,  with  his  big  baptizing  tongue  and 
his  momentary  rainbow  as  he  emerged  from  the  water 
and  shook  himself  with  my  stick  still  in  his  mouth; 
Timmie  with  his  ineradicable  hatred  for  cats ;  Maxie 
with  all  his  tricks  and  his  singsong  of  howls  when  the 
piano  played;  Schnider,  with  his  mania  for  my  slip- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  101 

pers  and  undies,  which  he  carried  into  most  unexpected 
quarters ;  and  Gyp,  God  bless  him,  who  was  so  homely 
of  face  and  form  but  so  true  blue  in  temper  and  trust. 

"Life,  to  a  dog,"  I  went  on,  "really  means  devo 
tion  to  man,  doesn't  it?" 

"What  are  you  driving  at,  anyway?"  asked  Dinky- 
Dunk. 

"I  was  just  wondering,"  I  said  as  I  sat  staring 
into  Bobs'  eyes,  "how  strange  it  would  be  if,  after 
all,  God  was  really  a  dog,  the  loving  and  faithful 
Watch-Dog  of  His  universe!" 

"Please  don't  be  blasphemous,"  Dinky-Dunk  coldly 
remarked. 

"But  I'm  not  blasphemous,"  I  tried  to  tell  him. 
"And  I  was  never  more  serious  in  my  life.  There's 
even  something  sacred  about  it,  once  you  look  at  it  in 
the  right  way.  Just  think  of  the  Shepherd-Dog  of 
the  Stars,  the  vigilant  and  affectionate  Watcher  who 
keeps  the  wandering  worlds  in  their  folds !  That's  not 
one  bit  worse  than  the  lamb  idea,  only  we've  got  so 
used  to  the  lamb  it  doesn't  shock  us  into  attention  any 
more.  Why,  just  look  at  these  eyes  of  Bobs  right 
now.  There's  more  nobility  and  devotion  and  trust 
and  love  in  them  than  was  ever  in  all  the  eyes  of  all 
the  lambs  that  ever  frisked  about  the  fields  and  sheep- 
folds  from  Dan  to  Beersheba !" 

"Your  theory,  I  believe,  is  entertained  by  the  Igor- 
rotes,"  remarked  Dinky-Dunk  as  he  made  a  pretenses 


102  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

of  turning  back  to  his  tractor-pamphlet.  "The  Igor- 
rotes  and  other  barbarians,"  he  repeated,  so  as  to  be 
sure  the  screw  was  being  turned  in  the  proper  direc 
tion. 

"And  now  I  know  why  she  said  the  more  she  knew 
about  men  the  better  she  liked  dogs,"  I  just  as  coldly 
remarked,  remembering  Madame  de  Stael.  "And  I 
believe  you're  jealous  of  poor  old  Bobs  just  because  he 
loves  me  more  than  you  do." 

Dinky-Dunk  put  down  his  pamphlet.  Then  he 
called  Bobs  over  to  his  side  of  the  table.  But  Bobs, 
I  noticed,  didn't  go  until  I'd  nodded  approval.  So 
Dinky-Dunk  took  his  turn  at  sitting  with  Bobs'  nose 
in  his  hand  and  staring  down  into  the  fathomless 
orbs  that  stared  up  at  him. 

"You'll  never  get  a  lady,  me  lud,  to  look  up  at  you 
like  that,"  I  told  him. 

"Perhaps  they  have,"  retorted  Dinky-Dunk,  with 
his  face  slightly  averted. 

"And  having  done  so  in  the  past,  there's  the  natural 
chance  that  they'll  do  so  in  the  future,"  I  retorted, 
making  it  half  a  question  and  half  a  statement.  But 
he  seemed  none  too  pleased  at  that  thrust,  and  he 
didn't  even  answer  me  when  I  told  him  I  supposed  I. 
was  his  Airedale,  because  they  say  an  Airedale  is  a 
one-man  dog. 

"Then  don't  at  least  get  distemper,"  observed  my 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  10S 

Kaikobad,  very  quietly,  over  the  top  of  his  tractor- 
catalogue. 

I  made  no  sign  that  I  had  heard  him.  But  Dinky- 
Dunk  would  never  have  spoken  to  me  that  way,  three 
short  years  ago.  And  I  imagine  he  knows  it.  For, 
after  all,  a  change  has  been  taking  place,  insubstantial 
and  unseen  and  subterranean,  a  settling  of  the  founda 
tions  of  life  which  comes  not  only  to  a  building  as  it 
grows  older  but  also  to  the  heart  as  it  grows  older. 
And  I'm  worried  about  the  future. 


Monday  the — Monday  the  I-forget-tchat 

IT'S  Monday,  blue  Monday,  that's  all  I  remember, 
except  that  there's  a  rift  in  the  lute  of  life  at  Alabama 
Ranch.  Yesterday  of  course  was  Sunday.  And  out 
of  that  day  of  rest  Dinky-Dunk  spent  just  five  hours 
over  at  Casa  Grande.  When  he  showed  up,  rather 
silent  and  constrained  and  an  hour  and  a  half  late  for 
dinner,  I  asked  him  what  had  happened. 

He  explained  that  he'd  been  adjusting  the  carbu 
reter  on  Lady  Alicia's  new  car. 

"Don't  you  think,  Duncan,"  I  said,  trying  to  speak 
calmly,  though  I  was  by  no  means  calm  inside,  "that 
it's  rather  a  sacrifice  of  dignity,  holding  yourself  at 
that  woman's  beck  and  call?" 

"We  happen  to  be  under  a  slight  debt  of  obliga 
tion  to  that  woman,"  my  husband  retorted,  clearly 
more  upset  than  I  imagined  he  could  be. 

"But,  Dinky-Dunk,  you're  not  her  hired  man,"  1 
protested,  wondering  how,  without  hurting  him,  I 
could  make  him  see  the  thing  from  my  standpoint. 

"No,  but  that's  about  what  I'm  going  to  become,'* 
was  his  altogether  unexpected  answer. 

"I  can't  say  that  I  quite  understand  you,"  I  told 
104 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  105 

him,  with  a  sick  feeling  which  I  found  it  hard  to  keep 
under.  Yet  he  must  have  noticed  something  amus 
ingly  tragic  in  my  attitude,  for  he  laughed,  though 
it  wasn't  without  a  touch  of  bitterness.  And  laugh 
ter,  under  the  circumstances,  didn't  altogether  add  to 
my  happiness. 

"I  simply  mean  that  Allie's  made  me  an  offer  of  a 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  month  to  become  her  ranch- 
manager,"  Dinky-Dunk  announced  with  a  casualness 
that  was  patently  forced.  "And  as  I  can't  wring 
that  much  out  of  this  half-section,  and  as  I'd  only 
be  four-flushing  if  I  let  outsiders  come  in  and  take 
everything  away  from  a  tenderfoot,  I  don't  see — " 

"And  such  a  lovely  tenderfoot,"  I  interrupted. 

" — I  don't  see  why  it  isn't  the  decent  and  reason 
able  thing,"  concluded  my  husband,  without  stoop 
ing  to  acknowledge  the  interruption,  "to  accept  that 
offer." 

I  understood,  in  a  way,  every  word  he  was  saying; 
yet  it  seemed  several  minutes  before  the  real  meaning 
of  a  somewhat  startling  situation  seeped  through  to 
my  brain. 

"But  surely,  if  we  get  a  crop,"  I  began.  It  was, 
however,  a  lame  beginning.  And  like  most  lame  be 
ginnings,  it  didn't  go  far. 

"How  are  we  going  to  get  a  crop  when  we  can't 
even  raise  money  enough  to  get  a  tractor  ?"  was  Dinky- 
Dun  k's  challenge.  "When  we  haven't  help,  and  we're 


106  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

short  of  seed-grain,  and  we  can't  even  get  a  gang- 
plow  on  credit?" 

It  didn't  sound  like  my  Dinky-Dunk  of  old,  for  I 
knew  that  he  was  equivocating  and  making  excuses,, 
that  he  was  engineering  our  ill  luck  into  an  apology 
for  worse  conduct.  But  I  was  afraid  of  myself,  even 
more  than  I  was  afraid  of  Dinky-Dunk.  And  the 
voice  of  Instinct  kept  whispering  to  me  to  be  patient. 

"Why  couldn't  we  sell  off  some  of  the  steers?"  I 
valiantly  suggested. 

"It's  the  wrong  season  for  selling  steers,"  Dinky- 
Dunk  replied  with  a  ponderous  sort  of  patience.  "And 
besides,  those  cattle  don't  belong  to  me." 

"Then  whose  are  they?"  I  demanded. 

"They're  yours,"  retorted  Dinky-Dunk,  and  I 
found  his  hair-splitting,  at  such  a  time,  singularly 
exasperating. 

"I  rather  imagine  they  belonged  to  the  family,  if 
you  intend  it  to  remain  a  family." 

He  winced  at  that,  as  I  had  proposed  that  he  should. 

"It  seems  to  be  getting  a  dangerously  divided  one,'r 
he  flung  back,  with  a  quick  and  hostile  glance  in  my 
direction. 

I  was  ready  to  fly  to  pieces,  like  a  barrel  that's  lost 
its  hoops.  But  a  thin  and  quavery  and  over-disturb 
ing  sound  from  the  swing-box  out  on  the  sleeping- 
porch  brought  me  up  short.  It  was  a  pizzicato  note 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  107 

which  I  promptly  recognized  as  the  gentle  Pee-Wee's 
advertisement  of  wakcfulness.  So  I  beat  a  quick  and 
involuntary  retreat,  knowing  only  too  well  what  I'd 
have  ahead  of  me  if  Poppsy  joined  in  to  make  that 
solo  a  duet. 

But  Pee-Wee  refused  to  be  silenced,  and  what 
Dinky-Dunk  had  just  said  felt  more  and  more  like  a 
branding-iron  against  my  breast.  So  I  carried  my 
wailing  infant  back  to  the  dinner-table  where  my  hus 
band  still  stood  beside  his  empty  chair.  The  hostile 
eye  with  which  he  regarded  the  belcantoing  Pee-Wee 
reminded  me  of  the  time  he'd  spoken  of  his  own  off-- 
spring  as  "squalling  brats."  And  the  memory  wasn't 
a  tranquillizing  one.  It  was  still  another  spur  rowel- 
ing  me  back  to  the  ring  of  combat. 

"Then  you've  decided  to  take  that  position?"  I 
demanded  as  I  surveyed  the  cooling  roast-beef  and  the 
fallen  Yorkshire  pudding. 

"As  soon  as  they  can  fix  up  my  sleeping-quarters 
in  the  bunk-house  over  at  Casa  Grande,"  was  Dinky- 
Dunk's  reply.  He  tried  to  say  it  casually,  but  didn't 
quite  succeed,  for  I  could  see  his  color  deepen  a  little. 
And  this,  in  turn,  led  x>  a  second  only  too  obvious  ges 
ture  of  self-defense. 

"My  monthly  checV,  ~,i  course,  will  be  delivered  to 
you,"  he  announced,  with  an  averted  eye. 

"Why  to  me?"  I  coldly  inquired. 


108  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"It  wouldn't  be  of  much  use  to  me,"  he  retorted. 
And  I  resented  his  basking  thus  openly  in  the  fires  of 
martyrdom. 

"In  that  case,"  I  asked,  "what  satisfaction  are  you 
getting  out  of  your  new  position?" 

That  sent  the  color  ebbing  from  his  face  again, 
and  he  looked  at  me  as  I'd  never  seen  him  look  at  me 
before.  We'd  both  been  mauled  by  the  paw  of  Des 
tiny,  and  we  were  both  nursing  ragged  nerves  and 
oversensitized  spirits,  facing  each  other  as  irritable 
as  teased  rattlers,  ready  to  thump  rocks  with  our  head. 
More  than  once  I'd  heard  Dinky-Dunk  proclaim  that 
the  right  sort  of  people  never  bickered  and  quarreled. 
And  I  remembered  Theobald  Gustav's  pet  aphorism  to 
the  effect  that  Hassen  machts  nichtj.  But  life  had  its 
limits.  And  I  wasn't  one  of  those  pink-eared  shivery 
little  white  mice  who  could  be  intimidated  into  tears  by 
a  frown  of  disapproval  from  my  imperial  mate.  And 
married  life,  after  all,  is  only  a  sort  of  guerre  d'usure. 

"And  you  think  you're  doing  the  right  thing?"  I 
demanded  of  my  husband,  not  without  derision,  con 
fronting  him  with  a  challenge  on  my  face  and  a 
bawling  Pee-Wee  on  my  hip. 

Dinky-Dunk  sniffed. 

"That  child  seems  to  have  its  mother's  disposition," 
he  murmured,  ignoring  my  question. 

"The  prospects  of  its  acquiring  anything  better 
from  its  father  seem  rather  remote,"  I  retorted,  strik- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  109 

ing  blindly.  For  that  over-deft  adding  of  insult  to 
injury  had  awakened  every  last  one  of  my  seven 
sleeping  devils.  It  was  an  evidence  of  cruelty,  cold 
and  calculated  cruelty.  And  by  this  time  little  waves 
of  liquid  fire  were  running  through  my  tingling  body. 

"Then  I  can't  be  of  much  service  to  this  family," 
announced  Dinky-Dunk,  with  his  maddening  note 
of  mockery. 

"I  fail  to  see  how  you  can  be  a  retriever  for  a 
flabby-minded  idler  and  the  head  of  this  household  at 
one  and  the  same  time,"  I  said  out  of  the  seething 
crater-fogs  of  my  indignation. 

"She's  never  impressed  me  as  being  flabby,"  he 
ventured,  with  a  quietness  which  only  a  person  who 
knew  him  would  or  could  recognize  as  dangerous. 

"Well,  I  don't  share  your  admiration  for  her,"  I 
retorted,  letting  the  tide  of  vitriol  carry  me  along  in 
its  sweep. 

Dinky-Dunk's  face  hardened. 

"Then  what  do  you  intend  doing  about  it?"  he 
demanded. 

That  was  a  poser,  all  right.  That  was  a  poser 
which,  I  suppose,  many  a  woman  at  some  time  in  her 
life  has  been  called  on  to  face.  What  did  I  intend 
doing  about  it?  I  didn't  care  much.  But  I  at  least 
intended  to  save  the  bruised  and  broken  hulk  of  my 
pride  from  utter  annihilation. 

"I  intend,"  I  cried  out  with  a  quaver  in  my  voice, 


110  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"since  you're  not  able  to  fill  the  bill,  to  be  head  of 
this  household  myself." 

"That  sounds  like"  an  ultimatum,"  said  Dinky- 
Dunk  very  slowly,  his  face  the  sickly  color  of  a  meer 
schaum-pipe  bowl. 

"You  can  take  it  any  way  you  want  to,"  I  passion 
ately  proclaimed,  compelled  to  raise  my  voice  to  the 
end  that  it  might  surmount  Pee-Wee's  swelling  cries. 
"And  while  you're  being  lackey  for  Lady  Alicia  New- 
land  I'll  run  this  ranch.  I'll  run  it  in  my  own  way, 
and  I'll  run  it  without  hanging  on  to  a  woman's  skirt !" 

Dinky-Dunk  stared  at  me  as  though  he  were  look 
ing  at  me  through  a  leper-squint.  But  he  had  been 
brutal,  was  being  brutal.  And  it  was  a  case  of  fight 
ing  fire  with  fire. 

"Then  you're  welcome  to  the  job,"  I  heard  him 
proclaiming  out  of  his  blind  white  heat  of  rage. 
"After  that,  I'm  through !" 

"It  won't  be  much  of  a  loss,"  I  shot  back  at  him, 
feeling  that  he'd  soured  a  bright  and  sunny  life  into 
eternal  blight. 

"I'll  remember  that,"  he  said  with  his  jaw  squared 
and  his  head  down.  I  saw  him  push  his  chair  aside 
and  wheel  about  and  stride  away  from  the  Yorkshire 
pudding  with  the  caved-in  roof,  and  the  roast-beef 
that  was  as  cold  as  my  own  heart,  and  the  indig 
nantly  protesting  Pee-Wee  who  in  some  vague  way 
kept  reminding  me  that  I  wasn't  quite  as  free-handed 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  111 

as  I  had  been  so  airily  imagining  myself.  For  I 
mistily  remembered  that  the  Twins,  before  the  day 
was  over,  were  going  to  find  it  a  very  flatulent  world. 
But  I  wasn't  crushed.  For  there  are  times  when  even 
wives  and  worms  will  turn.  And  this  was  one  of  them. 


Thursday  the  Thirtieth 

IT'S  a  busy  three  days  I've  been  having,  and  if  I'm 
a  bit  tuckered  out  in  body  I'm  still  invincible  in  spirit. 
For  I've  already  triumphed  over  a  tangle  or  two  and 
now  I'm  going  to  see  this  thing  through.  I'm  going 
to  see  Alabama  Ranch  make  good. 

I  teamed  in  to  Buckhorn,  with  Dinkie  and  the 
Twins  and  Ikkie  bedded  down  in  the  wagon-box  on 
fresh  wheat-straw,  and  had  a  talk  with  Syd  Wood 
ward,  the  dealer  there.  It  took  me  just  about  ten 
minutes  to  get  down  to  hard-pan  with  him,  once  he 
was  convinced  that  I  meant  business.  He's  going  to 
take  over  my  one  heavy  team,  Tumble-Weed  and 
Cloud-Maker,  though  it  still  gives  my  heart  a  wrench 
"to  think  of  parting  with  those  faithful  animals.  I'm 
also  going  to  sell  off  fifteen  or  eighteen  of  the  heaviest 
steers  and  turn  back  the  tin  Lizzie,  which  can  be  done 
without  for  a  few  months  at  least. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  I'm  going  to  have  an  8-16 
tractor  that'll  turn  over  an  acre  of  land  in  little  more 
than  an  hour's  time,  and  turn  it  over  a  trifle  better 
than  the  hired  hand's  usual  "cut  and  cover"  method, 
and  at  a  cost  of  less  than  fifty  cents  an  acre.  Later 
on,  I  can  use  my  tractor  for  hauling,  or  turn  it  to 
practically  any  other  form  of  farm-power  there  may 

112 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  113 

be  a  call  for.  I'm  also  getting  a  special  grade  of  seed- 
wheat.  There  was  a  time  when  I  thought  that  wheat 
was  just  merely  wheat.  It  rather  opened  my  eyes 
to  be  told  that  in  one  season  the  Shippers'  Clearance 
Association  definitely,  specified  and  duly  handled 
exactly  four  hundred  and  twenty-eight  grades  of  this 
particular  grain.  Even  straight  Northern  wheat, 
without  the  taint  of  weed-seed,  may  be  classified  in 
any  of  the  different  numbers  up  to  six,  and  also 
assorted  into  "tough,"  "wet,"  "damp,"  "musty," 
"binburnt"  and  half  a  dozen  other  grades  and  condi 
tions,  according  to  the  season.  But  since  I'm  to  be  a 
wheat-grower,  it's  my  duty  to  find  out  all  I  can  about 
the  subject. 

I  am  also  the  possessor  of  three  barrels  of  gaso 
line,  and  a  new  disk-drill,  together  with  the  needed 
repairs  for  the  old  drill  which  worked  so  badly  last 
season.  I've  got  Whinstane  Sandy  patching  up  the 
heavy  sets  of  harness,  and  at  daybreak  to-morrow 
I'm  going  to  have  him  out  on  the  land,  and  also 
Francois,  who  has  promised  to  stay  with  us  another 
two  weeks.  It  may  be  that  I'll  put  Ikkie  in  overalls 
and  get  her  out  there  too,  for  there's  not  a  day,  not 
an  hour,  to  be  lost.  I  want  my  crop  in.  I  want  my 
seed  planted,  and  the  sooner  the  better. 

Whinstane  Sandy,  on  account  of  his  lame  foot, 
can't  follow  a  plow.  But  there's  no  reason  he 
shouldn't  run  a  tractor.  If  it  wasn't  for  my  bairns^ 


114-  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

of  course,  I'd  take  that  tractor  in  hand  myself.  But 
my  two  little  hostages  to  fortune  cut  off  that  chance. 
I've  decided,  however,  to  have  Whinnie  build  a 
canopy-top  over  the  old  buckboard,  and  fit  two  strong 
frames,  just  behind  the  dashboard,  that  will  hold  a 
couple  of  willow-baskets,  end  to  end.  Then  I  can 
nest  Poppsy  and  Pee- Wee  in  these  two  baskets,  right 
tinder  my  nose,  with  little  Dinkie  beside  me  in  the  seat, 
and  drive  from  one  end  of  the  ranch  to  the  other  and 
see  that  the  work  is  being  done,  and  done  right.  The 
Lord  knows  how  I'll  get  back  to  the  shack  in  time  to 
rustle  the  grub — but  we'll  manage,  in  some  way. 

The  Twins  have  been  doing  better,  the  last  week  or 
two.  And  I  rather  dread  the  idea  of  weaning  them. 
If  I  had  somebody  to  look  after  them  I  could,  I  sup 
pose,  get  a  breast-pump  and  leave  their  mid-morning 
and  mid-afternoon  luncheons  in  cold-storage  for  them, 
and  so  ride  my  tractor  without  interruption.  I  remem 
ber  a  New  York  woman  who  did  that,  left  the  drawn 
milk  of  her  breast  on  ice,  so  that  she  might  gad  and 
shop  for  a  half-day  at  a  time.  But  the  more  I  think 
it  over  the  more  unnatural  and  inhuman  it  seems. 
Yet  to  hunt  for  help,  in  this  busy  land,  is  like  search 
ing  for  a  needle  in  a  hay-stack.  Already,  in  the  clear 
morning  air,  one  can  hear  the  stutter  and  skip  and 
cough  of  the  tractors  along  the  opalescent  sky-line, 
accosting  the  morning  sun  with  their  rattle  and  tattle 
of  harvests  to  be.  And  I  intend  to  be  in  on  the  game. 


Sunday  the  Second 

I'M  too  busy  to  puddle  in  spilt  milk  or  worry  over 
things  that  are  past.  I  can't  even  take  time  to 
rhapsodize  over  the  kitchen-cabinet  to  which  Whinnic 
put  the  finishing  touches  to-day  at  noon,  though  I 
know  it  will  save  me  many  a  step.  Poor  old  Whinnie, 
I'm  afraid,  is  more  a  putterer  than  a  plowman.  He's 
had  a  good  deal  of  trouble  with  the  tractor,  and  his 
lame  foot  seems  to  bother  him,  on  account  of  the  long 
hours,  but  he  proclaims  he'll  see  me  through. 

Tractor-plowing,  I'm  beginning  to  discover,  isn't 
the  simple  operation  it  sounds,  for  your  land,  in  the 
first  place,  has  to  be  staked  off  and  marked  with 
guidons,  since  you  must  know  your  measurements  and 
have  your  headlands  uniform  and  your  furrows 
straight  or  there'll  be  a  woeful  mix-up  before  you 
come  to  the  end  of  your  job.  The  great  trouble  is 
that  a  tractor  can't  turn  in  its  own  length,  as  a  team 
of  horses  can.  Hence  this  deploying  space  must  be 
wasted,  or  plowed  later  with  horses,  and  your  head 
lands  themselves  must  be  wide  enough  for  the  turning 
radius  of  your  tractor.  Some  of  the  ranchers  out 
here,  I  understand,  even  do  their  tractor-plowing  in 
the  form  of  a  series  of  elongated  figure-eights,  begin- 

115 


116  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

ning  at  one  corner  of  their  tract,  claiming  this  reduces 
the  time  spent  with  plows  out  of  the  ground.  But 
that  looked  too  complex  for  me  to  tackle. 

Then,  too,  machinery  has  one  thing  in  common  with 
man :  they  occasionally  get  out  of  kilter  at  the  very 
time  you  expect  most  from  them.  So  this  morning 
I  had  to  bend,  if  I  did  not  actually  break,  the  Sabbath 
by  working  on  my  tractor-engine.  I  put  on  Ikkie's 
overalls — for  I  have  succeeded  in  coercing  Ikkie  into 
a  jumper  and  the  riding-seat  of  the  old  gang-plow — 
and  went  out  and  studied  that  tractor.  I  was  deter 
mined  to  understand  just  what  was  giving  the  trouble. 

It  was  two  hours  before  I  located  the  same,  which 
was  caused  by  the  timer.  But  I've  conquered  the  dog- 
goned  thing,  and  got  her  to  spark  right,  and  I  went 
a  couple  of  rounds,  Sunday  and  all,  just  to  make 
sure  she  was  in  working  order.  And  neither  my 
actions  nor  my  language,  I  know,  are  those  of  a  per 
fect  lady.  But  any  one  who'd  lamped  me  in  that 
get-up,  covered  with  oil  and  dust  and  dirt,  would 
know  that  never  again  could  I  be  a  perfect  lady.  I'm 
a  wiper,  a  greaser,  a  clodhopper,  and,  according  to 
the  sullen  and  brooding-eyed  Ikkie,  a  bit  of  a  slave- 
driver.  And  the  odd  part  of  it  all  is  that  I'm  wring 
ing  a  perverse  sort  of  enjoyment  out  of  the  excite 
ment  and  the  novelty  of  the  thing.  I'm  being 
something  more  than  a  mere  mollusk.  I'm  making  my 
power  felt,  and  producing  results.  And  self-expres- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  117 

sion,  I  find,  is  the  breath  of  life  to  my  soul.  But 
I've  scarcely  time  to  do  my  hair,  and  my  complexion 
is  gone,  and  I've  got  cracks  in  my  cheek-skin.  I'm 
getting  old  and  ugly,  and  no  human  being  will  ever 
again  love  me.  Even  my  own  babies  gape  at  me  kind 
of  round-eyed  when  I  take  them  in  niy  arms. 

But  I'm  wrong  there,  and  I  know  I'm  wrong.  My 
little  Dinkie  will  always  love  me.  I  know  that  by  the 
way  his  little  brown  arms  cling  about  my  wind- 
roughened  neck,  by  the  way  he  burrows  in  against  my 
breast  and  hangs  on  to  me  and  hollers  for  his  Mummsy 
when  she's  out  of  sight.  He's  not  a  model  youngster, 
I  know.  I'm  afraid  I  love  him  too  much  to  demand 
perfection  from  him.  It's  the  hard  and  selfish  women, 
after  all,  who  make  the  ideal  mothers — at  least  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  disciplinarian.  For  the  selfish 
woman  refuses  to  be  blinded  by  love,  just  as  she 
refuses  to  be  imposed  upon  and  declines  to  be  troubled 
by  the  thought  of  inflicting  pain  on  those  perverse 
little  toddlers  who  grow  so  slowly  into  the  knowledge 
of  what  is  right  and  wrong.  It  hurts  me  like  Sam- 
Hill,  sometimes,  to  have  to  hurt  my  little  man-child. 
When  the  inevitable  and  slow-accumulating  spanking 
does  come,  I  try  to  be  cool-headed  and  strictly  just 
about  it — for  one  look  out  of  a  child's  eyes  has  the 
trick  of  bringing  you  suddenly  to  the  judgment-bar. 
Dinkie,  young  as  he  is,  can  already  appraise  and 
arraign  me  and  flash  back  his  recognition  of  in j  ustice. 


118  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

More  than  once  he's  made  me  think  of  those  lines  of 
Frances  Lyman's : 

"Just  a  look  of  swift  surprise 
From  the  depths  of  childish  eyes, 
Yet  my  soul  to  judgment  came, 
Cowering,  as  before  a  flame. 
Not  a  word,  a  lisp  of  blame : 
Just  a  look  of  swift  surprise 
In  the  quietly  lifted  eyes  !" 


Saturday  the  Twenty-second 

I'VE  got  my  seed  in,  glory  be !  The  deed  is  done ; 
the  mad  scramble  is  over.  And  Mother  Earth,  as 
tired  as  a  child  of  being  mauled,  lies  sleeping  in 
the  sun. 

If,  as  some  one  has  said,  to  plow  is  to  pray,  we've 
been  doing  a  heap  of  mouth-worship  on  Alabama 
Ranch  this  last  few  weeks.  But  the  final  acre  has 
been  turned  over,  the  final  long  sea  of  furrows  disked 
and  plank-dragged  and  seeded  down,  and  after  the 
heavy  rains  of  Thursday  night  there's  just  the  faint 
est  tinge  of  green,  here  and  there,  along  my  billiard- 
table  of  a  granary-to-be. 

But  the  mud  is  back,  and  to  save  my  kitchen  floor, 
last  night,  I  trimmed  down  a  worn-out  broom,  cut  off 
most  of  the  handle,  and  fastened  it  upside  down  in  a 
liole  I'd  bored  at  one  end  of  the  lower  door-step. 

All  this  talk  of  mine  about  wheat  sounds  as  though 
I  were  what  they  call  out  here  a  Soil  Robber,  or  a 
Land  Miner,  a  get-rich-quick  squatter  who  doesn't 
bother  about  mixed  farming  or  the  rotation  of  crops, 
with  no  true  love  for  the  land  which  he  impoverishes 
and  leaves  behind  him  when  he's  made  his  pile.  I 
want  to  make  my  pile,  it's  true,  but  we'll  soon  have 

119 


120  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

other  things  to  think  about.  There's  my  home  garden 
to  be  made  ready,  and  the  cattle  and  pigs  to  be  looked 
after,  and  a  run  to  be  built  for  my  chickens.  The 
latter,  for  all  their  neglect,  have  been  laying  like  mad 
and  I've  three  full  crates  of  eggs  in  the  cellar,  all 
dipped  in  water-glass  and  ready  for  barter  at  Buck- 
horn.  If  the  output  keeps  up  I'll  store  away  five  or 
six  crates  of  the  treated  eggs  for  Christmas-season 
sale,  for  in  midwinter  they  easily  bring  eighty  cents 
a  dozen. 

And  speaking  of  barter  reminds  me  that  both 
Dinkie  and  the  Twins  are  growing  out  of  their  duds, 
and  heaven  knows  when  I'll  find  time  to  make  more 
for  them.  They'll  probably  have  to  promenade  around 
like  Ikkie's  ancestors.  I've  even  run  out  of  safety- 
pins.  And  since  the  enduring  necessity  for  the 
safety-pin  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  it's  even 
found  on  the  baby-mummies  of  ancient  Egypt,  and 
must  be  a  good  four  thousand  years  old,  I've  had 
Whinnie  supply  me  with  some  home-made  ones,  manu 
factured  out  of  hair-pins.  .  .  .  My  little  Dinkie, 
I  notice,  is  going  to  love  animals.  He  seems  especially 
fond  of  horses,  and  is  fearless  when  beside  them,  or  on 
them,  or  even  under  them — for  he  walked  calmly  in 
under  the  belly  of  Jail-Bird,  who  could  have  brained 
him  with  one  pound  of  his  wicked  big  hoof.  But  the 
beast  seemed  to  know  that  it  was  a  friend  in  that 
forbidden  quarter,  and  never  so  much  as  moved  until 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  121 

Dinkie  had  been  rescued.  It  won't  be  long  now  before 
Pinkie  has  a  pinto  of  his  own  and  will  go  bobbing 
off  across  the  prairie-floor,  I  suppose,  like  a  monkey 
on  a  circus-horse.  Even  now  he  likes  nothing  better 
than  coming  with  his  mother  while  she  gathers  her 
"clutch"  of  eggs.  He  can  scramble  into  a  manger 
— where  my  unruly  hens  persist  in  making  an  occa 
sional  nest — like  a  marmoset.  The  delight  on  his 
face  at  the  discovery  of  even  two  or  three  "cackle- 
berries,"  as  Whinnie  calls  them,  is  worth  the  occasional 
breakage  and  yolk-stained  rompers.  For  I  share  in 
that  delight  myself,  since  egg-gathering  always  gives 
me  the  feeling  that  I'm  partaking  of  the  bounty  of 
Nature,  that  I'm  getting  something  for  next-to- 
nothing.  It's  the  same  impulse,  really,  which  drives 
city  women  to  the  bargain-counter  and  the  auction- 
room,  the  sublimated  passion  to  adorn  the  home  teepee- 
pole  with  the  fruits  of  their  cunning! 


Tuesday  the  Twenty-fifth 

YESTERDAY  I  teamed  in  to  Buckhorn,  for  supplies. 
And  as  I  drove  down  the  main  street  of  that  squalid 
little  western  town  I  must  have  looked  like  something 
the  crows  had  been  roosting  on.  But  just  as  I  was 
swinging  out  of  Syd  Woodward's  store-yard  I  caught 
sight  of  Lady  Allie  in  her  big  new  car,  drawn  up  in 
front  of  the  modestly  denominated  "New  York 
Emporium."  What  made  me  stare,  however,  was  the 
unexpected  vision  of  Duncan  Argyll  McKail,  emerg 
ing  from  the  aforesaid  "Emporium"  laden  down  with 
parcels.  These  he  carried  out  to  the  car  and  was 
dutifully  stowing  away  somewhere  down  in  the  back 
seat,  when  he  happened  to  look  up  and  catch  sight  of 
me  as  I  swung  by  in  my  wagon-box.  He  turned  a 
sort  of  dull  brick-red,  and  pretended  to  be  having  a 
lot  of  trouble  with  getting  those  parcels  where  they 
ought  to  be.  But  he  looked  exactly  like  a  groom. 
And  he  knew  it.  And  he  knew  that  I  knew  he  knew 
it.  And  if  he  was  miserable,  which  I  hop*  hv  war, 
I'm  pretty  sure  he  wasn't  one-half  so  miserable  as  I 
was — and  as  I  am.  "Damn  that  woman!"  I  caught 
myself  saying,  out  loud,  after  staring  at  my  mottled 
old  map  in  my  dressing-table  mirror. 

122 


I've  been  watching  the  sunset  to-night,  for  a  long 
time,  and  thinking  about  things.  It  was  one  of  those 
quiet  and  beautiful  prairie  sunsets  which  now  and 
then  flood  you  with  wonder,  in  spite  of  yourself,  and 
give  you  an  achey  little  feeling  in  the  heart.  It  was 
a  riot  of  orange  and  Roman  gold  fading  out  into  pale 
green,  with  misty  opal  and  pearl-dust  along  the 
nearer  sky-line,  then  a  big  star  or  two,  and  then 
silence,  the  silence  of  utter  peace  and  beauty.  But  it 
didn't  bring  peace  to  my  soul.  I  could  remember 
watching  just  such  a  sunset  with  my  lord  and  master 
beside  me,  and  turning  to  say :  "Don't  you  sometimes 
feel,  Lover,  that  you  were  simply  made  for  joy  and 
rapture  in  moments  like  this?  Don't  you  feel  as 
though  your  body  were  a  harp  that  could  throb  and 
sing  with  the  happiness  of  life?" 

And  I  remembered  the  way  my  Dunkie  had  lifted 
up  my  chin  and  kissed  me. 

But  that  seemed  a  long,  long  time  ago.  And  I 
wasn't  in  tune  with  the  Infinite.  And  I  felt  lonely 
and  old  and  neglected,  with  callouses  on  my  hands 
and  the  cords  showing  in  my  neck,  and  my  nerves  not 
exactly  what  they  ought  to  be.  For  Sunday,  which 
is  reckoned  as  a  day  of  rest,  had  been  a  long  and  busy 
day  for  me.  Dinkie  had  been  obstreperous  and  had 
eaten  most  of  the  paint  off  his  Noah's  Ark,  and  had 
later  burnt  his  fingers  pulling  my  unbaked  loaf-cake 
out  of  the  oven,  after  eventually  tiring  of  breaking 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


the  teeth  out  of  my  comb,  one  by  one.  Poppsy  and 
Pee-Wee  had  been  peevish  and  disdainful  of  each 
other's  society,  and  Iroquois  Annie  had  gruntingly 
intimated  that  she  was  about  fed  up  on  trekking  the 
floor  with  wailing  infants.  But  I'd  had  my  week's 
mending  to  do,  and  what  was  left  of  the  ironing  to 
get  through  and  Whinnie's  work-pants  to  veneer  with 
a  generous  new  patch,  and  thirteen  missing  buttons 
to  restore  to  the  kiddies'  different  garments.  My 
back  ached,  my  finger-bones  were  tired,  and  there  was 
a  jumpy  little  nerve  in  my  left  temple  going  for  all 
the  world  like  a  telegraph-key.  And  then  I  gave  up. 

I  sat  down  and  stared  at  that  neatly  folded  pile 
of  baby-clothes  two  feet  high,  a  layer-cake  of  whites 
and  faded  blues  and  pinks.  I  stared  at  it,  and  began 
to  gulp  tragically,  wallowing  in  a  wave  of  self-pity. 
I  felt  so  sorry  for  myself  that  I  let  my  flat-iron  burn 
a  hole  clean  through  the  ironing-sheet,  without  even 
smelling  it.  That,  I  told  myself,  was  all  that  life 
could  be  to  me,  just  a  round  of  washing  and  ironing 
and  meal-getting  and  mending,  fetch  and  carry,  work 
and  worry,  from  sun-up  until  sun-down,  and  many  a 
time  until  midnight. 

And  what,  I  demanded  of  the  frying-pan  on  its  nail 
above  the  stove-shelf,  was  I  getting  out  of  it?  What 
was  it  leading  to?  And  what  would  it  eventually 
bring  me?  It  would  eventually  bring  me  crabbed  and 
crow-footed  old  age,  and  fallen  arches  and  a  slab- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  125 

sided  figure  that  a  range-pinto  would  shy  at.  It 
would  bring  me  empty  year  after  year  out  here  on 
the  edge  of  Nowhere.  It  would  bring  me  drab  and 
spiritless  drudgery,  and  faded  eyes,  and  the  heart 
under  my  ribs  slowly  but  surely  growing  as  dead  as 
a  door-nail,  and  the  joy  of  living  just  as  slowly  but 
surely  going  out  of  my  life,  the  same  as  the  royal 
blue  had  faded  out  of  Dinkie's  little  denim  jumpers. 
At  that  very  moment,  I  remembered,  there  were 
women  listening  to  symphony  music  in  Carnegie  Hall, 
and  women  sitting  in  willow-rockers  at  Long  Beach 
contentedly  listening  to  the  sea-waves.  There  were 
women  driving  through  Central  Park,  soft  and  lovely 
with  early  spring,  or  motoring  up  to  the  Clairemont 
for  supper  and  watching  the  searchlights  from  the 
war-ships  along  the  Hudson,  and  listening  to  the 
music  on  the  roof-gardens  and  dancing  their  feet  off 
at  that  green-topped  heaven  of  youth  which  overlooks 
the  Plaza  where  Sherman's  bronze  horse  forever 
treads  its  spray  of  pine.  There  were  happy-go- 
lucky  girls  crowding  the  soda-fountains  and  regaling 
themselves  on  fizzy  water  and  fruit  sirups,  and  drop 
ping  in  at  first  nights  or  motoring  out  for  sea-food 
dinners  along  lamp-pearled  and  moonlit  boulevards 
of  smooth  asphalt.  And  here  I  was  planted  half-way 
up  to  the  North  Pole,  with  coyotes  for  company,  with 
a  husband  who  didn't  love  me,  and  not  a  jar  of  decent 
face-cream  within  fifteen  miles  of  the  shack !  I  was 


126  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

lost  there  in  a  sea  of  flat  desolation,  without  compan 
ionable  neighbors,  without  an  idea,  without  a  chance 
for  any  exchange  of  thought.  I  had  no  time  for 
reading,  and  what  was  even  worse,  I  had  no  desire  for 
reading,  but  plodded  on,  like  the  stunned  ox,  kindred 
to  the  range  animals  and  sister  to  the  cow. 

Then,  as  I  sat  luxuriating  before  my  crowded 
banquet-table  of  misery,  as  I  sat  mopping  my  nose — 
which  was  getting  most  unmistakably  rough  with 
prairie-winds  and  alkali-water — and  thinking  what  a 
fine  mess  I'd  made  of  a  promising  young  life,  I  fancied 
I  heard  an  altogether  too  familiar  C-sharp  cry.  So  I 
got  wearily  up  and  went  tiptoeing  in  to  see  if  either 
Poppsy  or  Pee- Wee  were  awake. 

But  they  were  there,  safe  and  sound  and  fast  asleep, 
curled  up  like  two  plump  little  kittens,  with  their  long 
lashes  on  their  cheeks  of  peach-blow  pink  and  their 
dewy  little  lips  slightly  parted  and  four  little  dimples 
in  the  back  of  each  of  the  four  little  hands.  And  as 
I  stood  looking  down  at  them,  with  a  shake  still  under 
my  breastbone,  I  couldn't  keep  from  saying:  "God 
bless  your  sleepy  old  bones !"  Something  melted  and 
fell  from  the  dripping  eaves  of  my  heart,  and  I  felt 
that  it  was  a  sacred  and  God-given  and  joyous  life, 
this  life  of  being  a  mother,  and  any  old  maid  who 
wants  to  pirouette  around  the  Plaza  roof  with  a 
lounge-lizard  breathing  winy  breaths  into  her  false 
hair  was  welcome  to  her  choice.  I  was  at  least  in  the 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


127 


battle  of  life — and  life  is  a  battle  which  scars  you 
more  when  you  try  to  keep  out  of  it  than  when  you 
wade  into  it.  I  was  a  mother  and  a  home-maker  and 
the  hope  and  buttress  of  the  future.  And  all  I  wanted 
was  a  good  night's  sleep  and  some  candid  friend  to 
tell  me  not  to  be  a  feather-headed  idiot,  but  a  sensible 
woman  with  a  sensible  perspective  on  things ! 


Friday  the  Twenty-seventh — Or  Should  It  Be 
the  Twenty-eighth 

IT  has  turned  quite  cold  again,  with  frosts  sharp 
enough  at  night  to  freeze  a  half-inch  of  ice  on  the 
tub  of  soft-water  I've  been  so  carefully  saving  for 
future  shampoos.  It's  just  as  well  I  didn't  try  to 
rush  the  season  by  getting  too  much  of  my  truck- 
garden  planted.  We're  glad  of  a  good  fire  in  the 
shack-stove  after  sun-down.  I've  rented  thirty  acres 
from  the  Land  Association  that  owns  the  half-section 
next  to  mine  and  am  going  to  get  them  into  oats.  If 
they  don't  ripen  up  before  the  autumn  frosts  come 
and  blight  them,  I  can  still  use  the  stuff  for  green 
feed.  And  I've  bargained  for  the  hay-rights  from 
the  upper  end  of  the  section,  but  heaven  only  knows 
how  I'll  ever  get  it  cut  and  stacked. 

Whinnie  had  to  kill  a  calf  yesterday,  for  we'd  run 
out  of  meat.  As  we're  in  a  district  that's  too  sparsely 
settled  for  a  Beef  Ring,  we  have  to  depend  on  our 
selves  for  our  roasts.  But  whatever  happens,  I  believe 
in  feeding  my  workers.  I  wonder,  by  the  way,  how 
the  fair  Lady  Allie  is  getting  along  with  her  cuisine. 
Is  she  giving  Dinky-Dunk  a  Beautiful  Thought  for 
breakfast,  instead  of  a  generous  plate  of  ham  and 

128 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  129 

eggs?  If  she  is,  I  imagine  she's  going  to  blight 
Romance  in  the  bud. 

I've  just  had  a  circular  letter  from  the  Women 
Grain  Growers'  Association  explaining  their  fight  for 
community  medical  service  and  a  system  of  itinerant 
rural  nurses.  They're  organized,  and  they're  in 
earnest,  and  I'm  with  them  to  the  last  ditch.  They're 
fighting  for  the  things  that  this  raw  new  country  is 
most  in  need  of.  It  will  take  us  some  time  to  catch 
up  with  the  East.  But  the  westerner's  a  scrambler, 
once  he's  started. 

I  can't  get  away  from  the  fact,  since  I  know  them 
both,  that  there's  a  big  gulf  between  the  East  and 
the  West.  It  shouldn't  be  there,  of  course,  but  that 
doesn't  seem  to  affect  the  issue.  It's  the  opposition 
of  the  New  to  the  Old,  of  the  Want-To-Bes  to  the 
Always-Has-Beens,  of  the  young  and  unruly  to  the 
settled  and  sedate.  We  seem  to  want  freedom,  and 
they  seem  to  prefer  order.  We  want  movement,  and 
they  want  repose.  We  look  more  feverishly  to  the 
future,  and  they  dwell  more  fondly  on  the  past.  They 
call  us  rough,  and  we  try  to  get  even  by  terming 
them  effete.  They  accentuate  form,  and  we  remain 
satisfied  with  performance.  We're  jealous  of  what 
they  have  and  they're  jealous  of  what  we  intend  to 
be.  We're  even  secretly  envious  of  certain  things 
peculiarly  theirs  which  we  openly  deride.  We're 
jealous,  at  heart,  of  their  leisure  and  their  air  of  per- 


130  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

manence,  of  their  accomplishments  and  arts  and 
books  and  music,  of  their  buildings  and  parks  and 
towns  with  the  mellowing  tone  of  time  over  them.  And 
as  soon  as  we  make  money  enough,  I  notice,  we  slip 
into  their  neighborhood  for  a  gulp  or  two  at  their 
fountains  of  culture.  Some  day,  naturally,  we'll  be 
more  alike,  and  have  more  in  common.  The  stronger 
colors  will  fade  out  of  the  newer  fabric  and  we'll 
merge  into  a  more  inoffensive  monotone  of  respect 
ability.  Our  Nava j  o-blanket  audacities  will  tone 
down  to  wall-tapestry  sedateness — but  not  too,  too 
soon,  I  pray  the  gods ! 

Speaking  of  Navajo  reminds  me  of  Redskins, 
and  Redskins  take  my  thoughts  straight  back  to 
Iroquois  Annie,  who  day  by  day  becomes  sullener  and 
stupider  and  more  impossible.  I  can  see  positive 
dislike  for  my  Dinkie  in  her  eyes,  and  I'm  at  present 
applying  zinc  ointment  to  Pee-Wee's  chafed  and 
scalded  little  body  because  of  her  neglect.  I'll  ring- 
welt  and  quarter  that  breed  yet,  mark  my  words !  As 
it  is,  there's  a  constant  cloud  of  worry  over  my  heart 
when  I'm  away  from  the  shack  and  my  bairns  are 
left  behind.  This  same  Ikkie,  apparently,  tried  to 
scald  poor  old  Bobs  the  other  day,  but  Bobs  dodged 
most  of  that  steaming  potato-water  and  decided  to 
even  up  the  ledger  of  ill-usage  by  giving  her  a  well- 
placed  nip  on  the  hip.  Ikkie  now  sits  down  with 
difficulty,  and  Bobs  shows  the  white  of  his  eye  when 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  131 

she  comes  near  him,  which  isn't  more  often  than 
Ikkie  can  help —  And  of  such,  in  these  troublous 
Ides  of  March,  and  April  and  May,  is  the  kingdom 
of  Chaddie  McKail ! 


Tuesday  the  Second 

I  MAY  as  well  begin  at  the  beginning,  I  suppose, 
so  as  to  get  the  whole  thing  straight.  And  it  started 
with  Whinstane  Sandy,  who  broke  the  wheel  off  the 
spring-wagon  and  the  third  commandment  at  one  and 
the  same  time.  So  I  harnessed  Slip- Along  up  to  the 
buckboard,  and  put  the  Twins  in  their  two  little 
crow's-nests  and  started  out  to  help  get  my  load  out 
of  that  bogged  trail,  leaving  Dinkie  behind  with  Iro- 
quois  Annie. 

There  was  a  chill  in  the  air  and  I  was  glad  of  my 
old  coonskin  coat.  It  was  almost  two  hours  before 
Whinnie  and  I  got  the  spring-wagon  out  of  its  mud- 
bath,  and  the  load  on  again,  and  a  willow  fence-post 
lashed  under  the  drooping  axle-end  to  sustain  it  on 
its  journey  back  to  Alabama  Ranch.  The  sun  was 
low,  by  this  time,  so  I  couldn't  wait  for  Whinnie  and 
the  team,  but  drove  on  ahead  with  the  Twins. 

I  was  glad  to  see  the  smoke  going  up  from  my 
lonely  little  shack-chimney,  for  I  was  mud-splashed 
and  tired  and  hungry,  and  the  thought  of  fire  and 
home  and  supper  gave  me  a  comfy  feeling  just  under 
the  tip  of  the  left  ventricle.  I  suppose  it  was  the 
long  evening  shadows  and  the  chill  of  the  air  that 

132 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  133 

made  the  shack  look  so  unutterably  lonely  as  I  drove 
up  to  it.  Or  perhaps  it  was  because  I  stared  in  vain 
for  some  sign  of  life.  At  any  rate,  I  didn't  stop  to 
unhitch  Slip-Along,  but  gathered  up  my  Twins  and 
made  for  the  door,  and  nearly  stumbled  on  my  nose 
over  the  broom-end  boot-wiper  which  hadn't  proved 
such  a  boon  as  I'd  expected. 

I  found  Iroquois  Annie  in  front  of  my  home-made 
dressing-table  mirror,  with  my  last  year's  summer 
hat  on  her  head  and  a  look  of  placid  admiration  on 
her  face.  The  shack  seemed  very  quiet.  It  seemed 
so  disturbingly  quiet  that  I  even  forgot  about  the  hat. 

"Where's  Dinkie?"  I  demanded,  as  I  deposited  the 
Twins  in  their  swing-box. 

"He  play  somew'ere  roun',"  announced  Ikkie, 
secreting  the  purloined  head-gear  and  circling  away 
from  the  forbidden  dressing-table. 

"But  where?"  I  asked,  with  exceptional  sharpness, 
for  my  eye  had  already  traversed  the  most  of  that 
shack  and  had  encountered  no  sign  of  him. 

That  sloe-eyed  breed  didn't  know  just  where,  and 
apparently  didn't  care.  He  was  playing  somewhere 
outside,  with  three  or  four  old  wooden  decoy-ducks. 
That  was  all  she  seemed  to  know.  But  I  didn't  stop 
to  question  her.  I  ran  to  the  door  and  looked  out. 
Then  my  heart  began  going  down  like  an  elevator, 
for  I  could  see  nothing  of  the  child.  So  I  made  the 
rounds  of  the  shack  again,  calling  "Dinkie !"  as  I  went. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


Then  I  looked  through  the  bunk-house,  and  even 
tried  the  cellar.  Then  I  went  to  the  rainwater  tub, 
with  my  heart  up  in  my  throat.  He  wasn't  there,  of 
course.  So  I  made  a  flying  circle  of  the  out  -buildings. 
But  still  I  got  no  trace  of  him. 

I  was  panting  when  I  got  back  to  the  shack,  where 
Iroquois  Annie-  was  fussing  stolidly  over  the  stove- 
fire.  I  caught  her  by  the  snake-like  braid  of  her  hair, 
though  I  didn't  know  I  was  doing  it,  at  the  moment, 
and  swung  her  about  so  that  my  face  confronted  hers. 

"Where's  my  boy?"  I  demanded  in  a  sort  of  shout 
of  mingled  terror  and  rage  and  dread.  "Where  is  he, 
you  empty-eyed  idiot?  Where  is  he?" 

But  that  half-breed,  of  course,  couldn't  tell  me. 
And  a  wave  of  sick  fear  swept  over  me.  My  Dinkie 
was  not  there.  He  was  nowhere  to  be  found.  He  was 
lost  —  lost  on  the  prairie.  And  I  was  shouting  all 
this  at  Ikkie,  without  being  quite  conscious  of  what 
I  was  doing. 

"And  remember,"  I  hissed  out  at  her,  in  a  voice 
that  didn't  sound  like  my  own  as  I  swung  her  about 
by  her  suddenly  parting  waist,  "if  anything  has 
happened  to  that  child,  I'll  kill  you!  Do  you  under 
stand,  I'll  kill  you  as  surely  as  you're  standing 
in  those  shoes!" 

I  went  over  the  shack,  room  by  room,  for  still  the 
third  time.  Then  I  went  over  the  bunk-house  and 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  135 

the  other  buildings,  and  every  corner  of  the  truck- 
garden,  calling  as  I  went. 

But  still  there  was  no  answer  to  my  calls.  And  I 
had  to  face  the  steel-cold  knowledge  that  my  child 
was  lost.  That  little  toddler,  scarcely  more  than  a 
baby,  had  wandered  away  on  the  open  prairie. 

For  one  moment  of  warming  relief  I  thought  of 
Bobs.  I  remembered  what  a  dog  is  sometimes  able 
to  do  in  such  predicaments.  But  I  also  remembered 
that  Bobs  was  still  out  on  the  trail  with  Whinnie. 
So  I  circled  off  on  the  undulating  floor  of  the  prairie, 
calling  "Dinkie"  every  minute  or  two  and  staring  into 
the  distance  until  my  eyes  ached,  hoping  to  see  some 
moving  dot  in  the  midst  of  all  that  silence  and  stillness. 

"My  boy  is  lost,"  I  kept  saying  to  myself,  in 
sobbing  little  whimpers,  with  my  heart  getting  more 
and  more  like  a  ball  of  lead.  And  there  could  only 
be  an  hour  or  two  of  daylight  left.  If  he  wasn't 
found  before  night  came  on — I  shut  the  thought  out 
of  my  heart,  and  started  back  for  the  shack,  in  a 
white  heat  of  desperation. 

"If  you  want  to  live,"  I  said  to  the  now  craven  and 
shrinking  Ikkie,  "you  get  in  that  buckboard  and  make 
for  Casa  Grande.  Drive  there  as  fast  as  you  can. 
Tell  my  husband  that  our  boy,  that  my  boy,  is  lost 
on  the  prairie.  Tell  him  to  get  help,  and  come,  come 
quick.  And  stop  at  the  Teetzel  ranch  on  your  way. 


136  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

Tell  them  to  send  men  on  horses,  and  lanterns!  But 
move,  woman,  move !" 

Ikkie  went,  with  Slip-Along  making  the  blackboard 
skid  on  the  uneven  trail  as  though  he  were  playing 
a  game  of  crack-the-whip  with  that  frightened  Indian. 
And  I  just  as  promptly  took  up  my  search  again, 
forgetting  about  the  Twins,  forgetting  about  being 
tired,  forgetting  everything. 

Half-way  between  the  fenced-in  hay-stacks  and  the 
corral-gate  I  found  a  battered  decoy-duck  with  a 
string  tied  to  its  neck.  It  was  one  of  a  set  that 
Francois  and  Whinstane  Sandy  had  whittled  out  over 
a  year  ago.  It  was  at  least  a  clue.  Dinkie  must 
have  dropped  it  there. 

It  sent  me  scuttling  back  among  the  hay-stacks, 
going  over  the  ground  there,  foot  by  foot  and  calling 
as  I  went,  until  my  voice  had  an  eerie  sound  \n  the 
cold  air  that  took  on  more  and  more  of  a  razor-edge 
as  the  sun  and  the  last  of  its  warmth  went  over  the 
rim  of  the  world.  It  seemed  an  empty  world,  a  plain 
of  ugly  desolation,  unfriendly  and  pitiless  in  its  vast- 
ness.  Even  the  soft  green  of  the  wheatlands  took 
on  a  look  like  verdigris,  as  though  it  were  something 
malignant  and  poisonous.  And  farther  out  there  were 
muskegs,  and  beyond  the  three-wire  fence,  which 
would  stand  no  bar  to  a  wandering  child,  there  were 
range-cattle,  half-wild  cattle  that  resented  the 
approach  of  anything  but  a  man  on  horseback.  And 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  137 

somewhere  in  those  darkening  regions  of  peril  my 
Dinky-Dink  was  lost. 

I  took  up  the  search  again,  with  the  barometer  of 
hope  falling  lower  and  lower.  But  I  told  myself  that 
I  must  be  systematic,  that  I  must  not  keep  covering 
the  same  ground,  that  I  must  make  the  most  of  what 
was  left  of  the  daylight.  So  I  blocked  out  imaginary 
squares  and  kept  running  and  calling  until  I  was  out 
of  breath,  then  resting  with  my  hand  against  my 
heart,  and  running  on  again.  But  I  could  find  no 
trace  of  him. 

He  was  such  a  little  tot,  I  kept  telling  myself.  He 
was  not  warmly  dressed,  and  night  was  coming  on. 
It  would  be  a  cold  night,  with  several  degrees  of  frost. 
He  would  be  alone,  on  that  wide  and  empty  prairie, 
with  terror  in  his  heart,  chilled  to  the  bone,  wailing 
for  his  mother,  wailing  until  he  was  able  to  wail  no 
more.  Already  the  light  was  going,  I  realized  with 
mounting  waves  of  desperation,  and  no  child,  dressed 
as  Dinkie  was  dressed,  could  live  through  the  night. 
Even  the  coyotes  would  realize  his  helplessness  and 
come  and  pick  his  bones  clean. 

I  kept  thinking  of  Bobs,  more  than  of  anything 
else,  and  wondering  why  Whinnie  was  so  slow  in  get 
ting  back  with  his  broken  wagon,  and  worrying  over 
when  the  men  would  come.  I  told  myself  to  be  calm, 
to  be  brave,  and  the  next  moment  was  busy  picturing 
a  little  dead  body  with  a  tear-washed  face.  But  I 


138  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

went  on,  calling  as  I  went.  Then  suddenly  I  thought 
of  praying. 

"O  God,  it  wouldn't  be  fair,  to  take  that  little  mite 
away  from  me,"  I  kept  saying  aloud.  "O  God,  be 
good  to  me  in  this,  be  merciful,  and  lead  me  to  him! 
Bring  him  back  before  it  is  too  late !  Bring  him  back, 
and  do  with  me  what  You  wish,  but  have  pity  on  that 
poor  little  toddler !  What  You  want  of  me,  I  will  do, 
but  don't,  O  God,  don't  take  my  boy  away  from  me !" 

I  made  promises  to  God,  foolish,  desperate,  infan 
tile  promises ;  trying  to  placate  Him  in  His  might 
with  my  resolutions  for  better  things,  trying  to  strike 
bargains,  at  the  last  moment,  with  the  Master  of  Life 
and  Death — even  protesting  that  I'd  forgive  Dinky- 
Dunk  for  anything  and  everything  he  might  have 
done,  and  that  it  was  the  Evil  One  speaking  through 
my  lips  when  I  said  I'd  surely  kill  Iroquois  Annie. 

Then  I  heard  the  signal-shots  of  a  gun,  and  turned 
back  toward  the  shack,  which  looked  small  and  squat 
on  the  floor  of  the  paling  prairie.  I  couldn't  run,  for 
running  was  beyond  me  now.  I  heard  Bobs  barking, 
and  the  Twins  crying,  and  I  saw  Whinnie.  I  thought 
for  one  fond  and  foolish  moment,  as  I  hurried  toward 
the  house,  that  they'd  found  my  Dinkie.  But  it  was 
a  false  hope.  Whinnie  had  been  frightened  at  the 
empty  shack  and  the  wailing  babies,  and  had  thought 
something  might  have  happened  to  me.  So  he  had 
taken  my  duck-gun  and  fired  those  signal-shots. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  139 

He  leaned  against  the  muddy  wagon-wheel  and  said 
"Guid  God!  Guid  God!"  over  and  over  again,  when 
I  told  him  Dinkie  was  lost.  Then  he  flung  down  the 
gun  and  drew  his  twisted  old  body  up,  peering 
through  the  twilight  at  my  face. 

I  suppose  it  frightened  him  a  little. 

"Dinna  fear,  lassie,  dinna  fear,"  he  said.  He  said 
it  in  such  a  deep  and  placid  voice  that  it  carried  con 
solation  to  my  spirit,  and  brought  a  shadow  of  con 
viction  trailing  along  behind  it.  "We'll  find  him.  I 
say  it  before  the  livin'  God,  we'll  find  him!" 

But  that  little  candle  of  hope  went  out  in  the  cold 
air,  for  I  could  see  that  night  was  coming  closer,  cold 
and  dark  and  silent.  I  forgot  about  Whinnie,  and 
didn't  even  notice  which  direction  he  took  when  he 
strode  off  on  his  lame  foot.  But  I  called  Bobs  to  me, 
and  tried  to  quiet  his  whimpering,  and  talked  to  him, 
and  told  him  Dinkie  was  lost,  the  little  Dinkie  we  all 
loved,  and  implored  him  to  go  and  find  my  boy  for  me. 

But  the  poor  dumb  creature  didn't  seem  to  under 
stand  me,  for  he  cringed  and  trembled  and  showed  a 
tendency  to  creep  off  to  the  stable  and  hide  there,  as 
though  the  weight  of  this  great  evil  which  had  be 
fallen  his  house  lay  on  him  and  him  alone.  And  I 
was  trying  to  coax  the  whimpering  Bobs  back  to  the 
shack-steps  when  Dinky-Dunk  himself  came  galloping 
up  through  the  uncertain  light,  with  Lady  Alicia  a 
few  hundred  yards  behind  him. 


140  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Have  you  found  him?"  my  husband  asked,  quick 
and  curt.  But  there  was  a  pale  greenish-yellow  tint 
to  his  face  that  made  me  think  of  Rocquefort  cheese. 

"No,"  I  told  him.  I  tried  to  speak  calmly,  deter 
mined  not  to  break  down  and  make  a  scene  there  before 
Lady  Alicia,  who'd  reined  up,  stock-still,  and  sat  star 
ing  in  front  of  her,  without  a  spoken  word. 

I  could  see  Dinky-Dunk's  mouth  harden. 

"Have  you  any  clue — any  hint?"  he  asked,  and  I 
could  catch  the  quaver  in  his  voice  as  he  spoke. 

"Not  a  thing,"  I  told  him,  remembering  that  we 
were  losing  time.  "He  simply  wandered  off,  when 
that  Indian  girl  wasn't  looking.  He  didn't  even  have 
a  cap  or  a  coat  on." 

I  heard  Lady  Alicia,  who  had  slipped  down  out  of 
the  saddle,  make  a  little  sound  as  I  said  this.  It  was 
half  a  gasp  and  half  a  groan  of  protest.  For  one 
brief  moment  Dinky-Dunk  stared  at  her,  almost 
accusingly,  I  thought.  Then  he  swung  his  horse 
savagely  about,  and  called  out  over  our  heads.  Other 
horsemen,  I  found,  had  come  loping  up  in  the  ghostly 
twilight  where  we  stood.  I  could  see  the  breath  from 
their  mounts'  nostrils,  white  in  the  frosty  air. 

"You,  Teetzel,  and  you,  O'Malley,"  called  my  hus 
band,  in  an  oddly  authoritative  and  barking  voice, 
"and  you  on  the  roan  there,  swing  twenty  paces  out 
from  one  another  and  circle  the  shack.  Then  widen 
the  circle,  each  turn.  There's  no  use  calling,  for  the 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  141 

boy'll  be  down.  He'll  be  done  out.  But  don't  speak 
until  you  see  something.  And  for  the  love  of  God, 
watch  close.  He's  not  three  yet,  remember.  He 
couldn't  have  got  far  away !" 

I  should  have  found  something  reassuring  in  those 
quick  and  purposeful  words  of  command,  but  they 
only  served  to  bring  the  horror  of  the  situation  closer 
home  to  me.  They  brought  before  me  more  graphic 
ally  than  ever  the  thought  that  I'd  been  trying  to 
get  out  of  my  head,  the  picture  of  a  huddled  small 
body,  with  a  tear-washed  face,  growing  colder  and 
colder,  until  the  solitary  little  flame  of  life  went  com 
pletely  out  in  the  midst  of  that  star-strewn  darkness. 
Only  too  willingly,  I  knew,  I  would  have  covered  that 
chilling  body  with  the  warmth  of  my  own,  though  wild 
horses  rode  over  me  until  the  end  of  time.  I  tried  to 
picture  life  without  Dinkie.  I  tried  to  imagine  my 
home  without  that  bright  and  friendly  little  face, 
without  the  patter  of  those  restless  little  feet,  without 
the  sound  of  those  beleaguering  little  coos  of  child- 
love  with  which  he  used  to  burrow  his  head  into  the 
hollow  of  my  shoulder. 

It  was  too  much  for  me.  I  had  to  lean  against 
the  wagon-wheel  and  gulp.  It  was  Lady  Alicia, 
emerging  from  the  shack,  who  brought  me  back  to  the 
world  about  me.  I  could  just  see  her  as  she  stood 
beside  me,  for  night  had  fallen  by  this  time,  night 
nearly  as  black  as  the  blackness  of  my  own  heart. 


142  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Look  here,"  she  said  almost  gruffly.  "Whatever 
happens,  you've  got  to  have  something  to  drink.  I've 
got  a  kettle  on,  and  I'm  going  back  to  make  tea,  or  a 
pot  of  coffee,  or  whatever  I  can  find." 

"Tea?"  I  echoed,  as  the  engines  of  indignation 
raced  in  my  shaken  body.  "Tea?  It  sounds  pretty, 
doesn't  it,  sitting  down  to  a  pink  tea,  when  there's  a 
human  being  dying  somewhere  out  in  that  darkness !" 

My  bitterness,  however,  had  no  visible  effect  on 
Lady  Alicia. 

"Perhaps  coffee  would  be  better,"  she  coolly 
amended.  "And  those  babies  of  yours  are  crying 
their  heads  off  in  there,  and  I  don't  seem  to  be  able  to 
do  anything  to  stop  them.  I  rather  fancy  they're  in 
need  of  feeding,  aren't  they?" 

It  was  then  and  then  only  that  I  remembered  about 
my  poor  neglected  Twins.  I  groped  my  way  in 
through  the  darkness,  quite  calm  again,  and  sat  down 
and  unbuttoned  my  waist  and  nursed  Poppsy,  and 
then  took  up  the  indignant  and  wailing  Pee-Wee, 
vaguely  wondering  if  the  milk  in  my  breast  wouldn't 
prove  poison  to  them  and  if  all  my  blood  hadn't 
turned  to  acid. 

I  was  still  nursing  Pee-Wee  when  Bud  Teetzel 
came  into  the  shack  and  asked  how  many  lanterns  we 
had  about  the  place.  There  was  a  sullen  look  on  his 
face,  and  his  eyes  refused  to  meet  mine.  So  I  knew 
his  search  had  not  succeeded. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  143 

Then  young  O'Malley  came  in  and  asked  for 
matches,  and  I  knew  even  before  he  spoke,  that  he  too 
had  failed.  They  had  all  failed. 

I  could  hear  Dinky-Dunk's  voice  outside,  a  little 
hoarse  and  throaty.  I  felt  very  tired,  as  I  put  Pee- 
Wee  back  in  his  cradle.  It  seemed  as  though  an 
invisible  hand  were  squeezing  the  life  out  of  my  body 
and  making  it  hard  for  me  to  breathe.  I  could  hear 
the  cows  bawling,  reminding  the  world  that  they  had 
not  yet  been  milked.  I  could  smell  the  strong  coffee 
that  Lady  Alicia  was  pouring  out  into  a  cup.  She 
stepped  on  something  as  she  carried  it  to  me.  She 
stopped  to  pick  it  up — and  it  was  one  of  Dinkie's 
little  stub-toed  button  shoes. 

"Let  me  see  it,"  I  commanded,  as  she  made  a  foolish 
effort  to  get  it  out  of  sight.  I  took  it  from  her  and 
turned  it  over  in  my  hand.  That  was  the  way,  I 
remembered,  mothers  turned  over  the  shoes  of  the 
children  they  had  lost,  the  children  who  could  never, 
never,  so  long  as  they  worked  and  waited  and  listened 
in  this  wide  world,  come  back  to  them  again. 

Then  I  put  down  the  shoe,  for  I  could  hear  one  of 
the  men  outside  say  that  the  upper  muskeg  ought 
to  be  dragged. 

"Try  that  cup  of  coffee  now,"  suggested  Lady 
Alicia.  I  liked  her  quietness.  I  admired  her  calm 
ness,  under  the  circumstances.  And  I  remembered 
that  I  ought  to  give  some  evidence  of  this  by  accept- 


144  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

ing  the  hot  drink  she  had  made  for  me.  So  I  took 
the  coffee  and  drank  it.  The  bawling  of  my  milk- 
cows,  across  the  cold  night  air,  began  to  annoy  me. 

"My  cows  haven't  been  milked,"  I  complained.  It 
was  foolish,  but  I  couldn't  help  it.  Then  I  reached 
out  for  Dinkie's  broken-toed  shoe,  and  studied  it  for 
a  long  time.  Lady  Alicia  crossed  to  the  shack  door, 
and  stood  staring  out  through  it.  ... 

She  was  still  standing  there  when  Whinnie  came  in, 
with  the  stable  lantern  in  his  hand,  and  brushed  her 
aside.  He  came  to  where  I  was  sitting  and  knelt  down 
in  front  of  me,  on  the  shack-floor,  with  his  heavy 
rough  hand  on  my  knee.  I  could  smell  the  stable- 
manure  that  clung  to  his  shoes. 

"God  has  been  guid  to  ye,  ma'am !"  he  said  in  a 
rapt  voice,  which  was  little  more  than  an  awed  whisper. 
But  it  was  more  his  eyes,  with  the  uncanny  light  in 
them  making  them  shine  like  a  dog's,  that  brought 
me  to  my  feet.  For  I  had  a  sudden  feeling  that  there 
was  Something  just  outside  the  door  which  he  hadn't 
dared  to  bring  in  to  me,  a  little  dead  body  with 
pinched  face  and  trailing  arms. 

I  tried  to  speak,  but  I  couldn't.  I  merely  gulped. 
And  Whinnie's  rough  hand  pushed  me  back  into 
my  chair. 

"Dinna  greet,"  he  said,  with  two  tears  creeping 
crookedly  down  his  own  seamed  and  wind-rough 
ened  face. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  145 

But  I  continued  to  gulp. 

"Dinna  greet,  for  your  laddie's  safe  and  sound!" 
I  heard  the  rapt  voice  saying. 

I  could  hear  what  he'd  said,  quite  distinctly,  yet 
his  words  seemed  without  color,  without  meaning, 
without  sense. 

"Have  you  found  him?"  called  out  Lady  Alicia 
sharply. 

"Aye,  he's  found,"  said  Whinnie,  with  an  exultant 
gulp  of  his  own,  but  without  so  much  as  turning  to 
look  at  that  other  woman,  who,  apparently,  was  of 
small  concern  to  him.  His  eyes  were  on  me,  and  he 
was  very  intimately  patting  my  leg,  without  quite 
knowing  it. 

"He  says  that  the  child's  been  found,"  interpreted 
Lady  Alicia,  obviously  disturbed  by  the  expression  on 
my  face. 

"He's  just  yon,  as  warm  and  safe  as  a  bird  in  a 
nest,"  further  expounded  Whinstane  Sandy. 

"Where?"  demanded  Lady  Alicia.  But  Whinnie 
ignored  her. 

"It  was  Bobs,  ma'am,"  were  the  blessed  words  I 
heard  the  old  lips  saying  to  me,  "who  kept  whimper- 
in'  and  grievin'  about  the  upper  stable  door,  which 
had  been  swung  shut.  It  was  Bobs  who  led  me  back 
yon,  fair  against  my  will.  And  there  I  found  our 
laddie,  asleep  in  the  manger  of  Slip-Along,  nested 
deep  in  the  hay,  as  safe  and  warm  as  if  in  his  own  bed." 


146  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

I  didn't  speak  or  move  for  what  must  have  been  a 
full  minute.  I  couldn't.  I  felt  as  though  my  soul 
had  been  inverted  and  emptied  of  all  feeling,  like  a 
wine-glass  that's  turned  over.  For  a  full  minute  I 
sat  looking  straight  ahead  of  me.  Then  I  got  up,  and 
went  to  where  I  remembered  Dinky-Dunk  kept  his 
revolver.  I  took  it  up  and  started  to  cross  to  the  open 
door.  But  Lady  Alicia  caught  me  sharply  by  the 
arm. 

"What  are  you  doing?"  she  gasped,  imagining,  I 
suppose,  that  I'd  gone  mad  and  was  about  to  blow  my 
brains  out.  She  even  took  the  firearm  from  my  hand. 

"It's  the  men,"  I  tried  to  explain.  "They  should 
be  told.  Give  them  three  signal-shots  to  bring  them 
in."  Then  I  turned  to  Whinnie.  He  nodded  and 
took  me  by  the  hand. 

"Now  take  me  to  my  boy,"  I  said  very  quietly. 

I  was  still  quite  calm,  I  think.  But  deep  down  in 
side  of  me  I  could  feel  a  faint  glow.  It  wasn't  alto 
gether  joy,  and  it  wasn't  altogether  relief.  It  was 
something  which  left  me  just  a  little  bewildered,  a 
good  deal  like  a  school-girl  after  her  first  glass  of 
champagne  at  Christmas  dinner.  It  left  me  oddly 
self-immured,  miles  and  miles  from  the  figures  so  close 
to  me,  remote  even  from  the  kindly  old  man  who  hob 
bled  a  little  and  went  with  a  decided  list  to  starboard 
as  he  led  me  out  toward  what  he  always  spoke  of  as 
the  upper  stable. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  147 

Yet  at  the  back  of  my  brain,  all  the  while,  was  some 
shadow  of  doubt,  of  skepticism,  of  reiterated  self- 
M-arning  that  it  was  all  too  good  to  be  true.  It  wasn't 
until  I  looked  over  the  well-gnawed  top  rail  of  Slip- 
Along's  broken  manger  and  saw  that  blessed  boy  there, 
by  the  light  cf  Whinnie's  lantern,  saw  that  blessed 
boy  of  mine  half  buried  in  that  soft  and  cushioning 
prairie-grass,  saw  that  he  was  warm  and  breathing, 
and  safe  and  sound,  that  I  fully  realized  how  he  had 
been  saved  for  me. 

"The  laddie'd  been  after  a  clutch  of  eggs,  I'm 
thinkin',"  whispered  Whinnie  to  me,  pointing  to  a 
yellow  stain  on  his  waist,  which  was  clearly  caused  by 
the  yolk  of  a  broken  egg.  And  Whinnie  stooped 
over  to  take  Dinkie  up  in  his  arms,  but  I  pushed  him 
aside. 

"No,  I'll  take  him,"  I  announced. 

He'd  be  the  hungry  boy  when  he  awakened,  I  re 
membered  as  I  gathered  him  up  in  my  arms.  My 
knees  were  a  bit  shaky,  as  I  carried  him  back  to  the 
shack,  but  I  did  my  best  to  disguise  that  fact.  I 
could  have  carried  him,  I  believe,  right  on  to  Buck- 
horn,  he  seemed  such  a  precious  burden.  And  I  was 
glad  of  that  demand  for  physical  expenditure.  It 
seemed  to  bring  me  down  to  earth  again,  to  get  things 
back  into  perspective.  But  for  the  life  of  me  I 
couldn't  find  a  word  to  say  to  Lady  Allie  as  I  walked 
into  my  home  with  Dinky-Dink  in  my  arms.  She 


148  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

stood  watching  me  for  a  moment  or  two  as  I  started 
to  undress  him,  still  heavy  with  slumber.  Then  she 
seemed  to  realize  that  she  was,  after  all,  an  outsider, 
and  slipped  out  through  the  door.  I  was  glad  she 
did,  for  a  minute  later  Dinkie  began  to  whimper  and 
cry,  as  any  child  would  with  an  empty  stomach  and  an 
over-draft  of  sleep.  It  developed  into  a  good  lusty 
bawl,  which  would  surely  have  spoilt  the  picture  to 
an  outsider.  But  it  did  a  good  turn  in  keeping  me 
too  busy  to  pump  any  more  brine  on  my  own  part. 

When  Dinky-Dunk  came  in  I  was  feeding  little 
Dinkie  a  bowl  of  hot  tapioca  well  drowned  in  cream 
and  sugar.  My  lord  and  master  took  off  his  hat — 
which  struck  me  as  funny — and  stood  regarding  us 
from  just  inside  the  door.  He  stood  there  by  the  door 
for  quite  a  long  while. 

"Hadn't  I  better  stay  here  with  you  to-night?"  he 
finally  asked,  in  a  voice  that  didn't  sound  a  bit  like 
his  own. 

I  looked  up  at  him.  But  he  stood  well  back  from 
the  range  of  the  lamplight  and  I  found  it  hard  to  de 
cipher  his  expression.  The  one  feeling  I  was  certain 
of  was  a  vague  feeling  of  disappointment.  What 
caused  it,  I  could  not  say.  But  it  was  there. 

"After  what's  happened,"  I  told  him  as  quietly  as 
I  could,  "I  think  I'd  rather  be  alone !" 

He  stood  for  another  moment  or  two,  apparently 
letting  this  sink  in.  It  wasn't  until  he'd  turned  and 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  149 

walked  out  of  the  door  that  I  realized  the  ambiguity 
of  that  retort  of  mine.  I  was  almost  prompted  to  go 
after  him.  But  I  checked  myself  by  saying:  "Well, 
if  the  shoe  fits,  put  it  on !"  But  in  my  heart  of  hearts 
I  didn't  mean  it.  I  wanted  him  to  come  back.  I 
wanted  him  to  share  my  happiness  with  me,  to  sit  and 
talk  the  thing  over,  to  exploit  it  to  the  full  in  a  sweet 
retrospect  of  relief,  as  people  seem  to  want  to  do  after 
they've  safely  passed  through  great  peril. 

It  wasn't  until  half  an  hour  later,  when  Dinkie  was 
sound  asleep  again  and  tucked  away  in  his  crib,  that  I 
remembered  my  frantic  promises  to  God  to  forgive 
Dinky-Dunk  everything,  if  He'd  only  bring  my  boy 
back  to  me.  And  there'd  been  other  promises,  equally 
foolish  and  frantic.  I've  been  thinking  them  over,  in 
fact,  and  I  am,  going  to  make  an  effort  to  keep  them. 
I'm  so  happy  that  it  hurts.  And  when  you're  happy 
you  want  other  people  to  be  that  way,  too. 


Wednesday  tlie  Third 

HUMOE,  is  the  salt  of  life.  The  older  I  grow  the 
more  I  realize  that  truth.  And  I'm  going  to  keep 
more  of  it,  if  I  can,  in  the  work-room  of  my  soul. 
Last  night,  when  Dinky-Dunk  and  I  were  so  uppish 
with  each  other,  one  single  clap  of  humor  might  have 
shaken  the  solemnity  out  of  the  situation  and  shown 
us  up  for  the  poseurs  we  really  were.  But  Pride  is 
the  mother  of  all  contention.  If  Dinky-Dunk,  when 
I  was  so  imperially  dismissing  him  from  his  own  home, 
had  only  up  and  said:  "Look  here,  Lady-bird,  this 
is  as  much  my  house  as  it  is  yours,  you  feather-headed 
little  idiot,  and  I'll  put  a  June-bug  down  your  neck 
if  you  don't  let  me  stay  here !"  If  he'd  only  said  that, 
and  sat  down  and  been  the  safety-valve  to  my  emotions 
which  all  husbands  ought  to  be  to  all  wives,  the  igloo 
would  have  melted  about  my  heart  and  left  me  nothing 
to  do  but  crawl  over  to  him  and  tell  him  that  I  missed 
him  more  than  tongue  could  tell,  and  that  getting 
Dinkie's  daddy  back  was  almost  as  good  as  getting 
Dinkie  himself  back  to  me. 

But  we  missed  our  chance.  And  I  suppose  Lady 
Allie  sat  up  until  all  hours  of  the  night,  over  at  Casa 
Grande,  consoling  my  Diddums  and  talking  things 

150 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  151 

over.  It  gives  me  a  sort  of  bruised  feeling,  for  I've 
nobody  but  Whinstane  Sandy  to  unbosom  my  soul 
to.  ... 

Iroquois  Annie  has  flown  the  coop.  She  has  gone 
for  good.  I  must  have  struck  terror  deeper  into  the 
heart  of  that  Redskin  than  I  imagined,  for  rather 
than  face  death  and  torture  at  my  hands  she  left 
Slip-Along  and  the  buckboard  at  the  Teetzel  Ranch 
and  vamoosed  off  into  the  great  unknown.  I  have 
done  up  her  valuables  in  an  old  sugar-sack,  and  if 
they're  not  sent  for  in  a  week's  time  I'll  make  a  bon 
fire  of  the  truck.  Whinnie,  by  the  way,  is  to  help  me 
with  the  house-work.  He  is  much  better  at  washing 
dishes  than  I  ever  thought  he  could  be.  And  he  an 
nounces  he  can  make  a  fair  brand  of  bannock,  if  we 
run  out  of  bread. 


Tuesday  the  Ninth 

I'VE  got  a  hired  man.  He  dropped  like  manna, 
out  of  the  skies,  or,  rather,  he  emerged  like  a  tad 
pole  out  of  the  mud.  But  there's  something  odd  about 
him  and  I've  a  floaty  idea  he's  a  refugee  from  justice 
and  that  some  day  one  of  the  Mounties  will  come  rid 
ing  up  to  my  shack-door  and  lead  my  farm-help  away 
in  handcuffs. 

Whatever  he  is,  I  can't  quite  make  him  out.  But  I 
have  my  suspicions,  and  I'm  leaving  everything  in 
abeyance  until  they're  confirmed. 

I  was  on  Paddy  the  other  morning,  in  my  old  shoot 
ing-jacket  and  Stetson,  going  like  the  wind  for  the 
Dixon  Ranch,  after  hearing  they  had  a  Barnado  boy 
they  wanted  to  unload  on  anybody  who'd  undertake 
to  keep  him  under  control.  The  trail  was  heavy  from 
the  night  rain  that  had  swept  the  prairie  like  a  new 
broom,  but  the  sun  was  shining  again  and  the  air  was 
like  champagne.  The  ozone  and  the  exercise  and 
Paddy's  legato  stride  all  tended  to  key  up  my  spirits, 
and  I  went  along  humming: 

"Bake  me  a  bannock, 

And  cut  me  a  callop, 
For  I've  stole  me  a  grey  mare 

And  I'm  off  at  a  gallop !" 
152 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  153 

It  wasn't  until  I  saw  Paddy's  ear  prick  up  like  a 
rabbit's  that  I  noticed  the  gun-boat  on  the  trail  ahead. 
At  least  I  thought  it  was  a  gun-boat,  for  a  minute  or 
two,  until  I  cantered  closer  and  saw  that  is  was  a  huge 
gray  touring-car  half  foundered  in  the  prairie-mud. 
Beside  it  sat  a  long  lean  man  in  very  muddy  clothes 
and  a  rather  disreputable-looking  hat.  He  sat  with  a 
ridiculously  contented  look  on  his  face,  smoking  a 
small  briar  pipe,  and  he  laughed  outright  as  I  circled 
his  mud-hole  and  came  to  a  stop  opposite  the  car  with 
its  nose  poked  deep  down  in  the  mire,  for  all  the  world 
like  a  rooting  shote. 

"Good  morning,  Diana,"  he  said,  quite  coolly,  as  he 
removed  his  battered-locking  cap. 

His  salutation  struck  me  as  impertinent,  so  I  re 
turned  it  in  the  curtest  of  nods. 

"Are  you  in  trouble?"  I  asked. 

"None  whatever,"  he  airily  replied,  still  eying  me. 
"But  my  car  seems  to  be,  doesn't  it?" 

"What's  wrong?"  I  demanded,  determined  that  he 
shouldn't  elbow  me  out  of  my  matter-of-factness. 

He  turned  to  his  automobile  and  inspected  it  with  an 
indifferent  eye. 

"I  turned  this  old  tub  into  a  steam-engine,  racing 
her  until  the  water  boiled,  and  she  got  even  with  me 
by  blowing  up  an  intake  hose.  But  I'm  perfectly  sat 
isfied." 

"With  what?"  I  coldly  inquired. 


154.  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"With  being  stuck  here,"  he  replied.  He  had 
rather  a  bright  gray  eye  with  greenish  lights  in  it,  and 
he  looked  rational  enough.  But  there  was  something 
fundamentally  wrong  with  him. 

"What  makes  you  feel  that  way?"  I  asked,  though 
for  a  moment  I'd  been  prompted  to  inquire  if  they 
hadn't  let  him  out  a  little  too  soon. 

"Because  I  wouldn't  have  seen  you,  who  should  be 
wearing  a  crescent  moon  on  your  brow,  if  my  good 
friend  Hyacinthe  hadn't  mired  herself  in  this  mud- 
hole,"  he  had  the  effrontery  to  tell  me. 

"Is  there  anything  so  remarkably  consolatory  in 
that  vision?"  I  asked,  deciding  that  I  might  as  well 
convince  him  he  wasn't  confronting  an  untutored  she- 
coolie  of  the  prairie.  Whereupon  he  studied  me  more 
pointedly  and  more  impersonally  than  ever. 

"It's  more  than  consolatory,"  he  said  with  an  ac 
centuating  flourish  of  the  little  briar  pipe.  "It's  quite 
compensatory." 

It  was  rather  ponderously  clever,  I  suppose;  but 
I  was  tired  of  both  verbal  quibbling  and  roadside 
gallantry. 

"Do  you  want  to  get  out  of  that  hole  ?"  I  demanded. 
For  it's  a  law  of  the  prairie-land,  of  course,  never  to 
side-step  a  stranger  in  distress. 

"Not  if  it  means  an  ending  to  this  interview,"  he 
told  me. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  155 

It  was  my  turn  to  eye  him.  But  there  wasn't  much 
warmth  in  the  inspection. 

"What  are  you  trying  to  do?"  I  calmly  inquired, 
for  prairie  life  hadn't  exactly  left  me  a  shy  and  timor 
ous  gazelle  in  the  haunts  of  that  stalker  known  as 
Man. 

"I'm  trying  to  figure  out,"  he  just  as  calmly  re 
torted,  apparently  quite  unimpressed  by  my  uppity 
tone,  "how  anything  as  radiant  and  lovely  as  you  ever 
got  landed  up  here  in  this  heaven  of  chilblains  and 
coyotes." 

The  hare-brained  idiot  was  actually  trying  to  make 
love  to  me.  And  I  then  and  there  decided  to  put  a 
brake  on  his  wheel  of  eloquence. 

"And  I'm  still  trying  to  figure  out,"  I  told  him, 
"how  what  impresses  me  as  rather  a  third-class  type 
of  man  is  able  to  ride  around  in  what  looks  like  a 
first-class  car !  Unless,"  and  the  thought  came  to  me 
out  of  a  clear  sky,  and  when  they  come  that  way 
they're  inspirations  and  are  usually  true,  "unless  you 
stole  it !" 

He  turned  a  solemn  eye  on  the  dejected-looking 
vehicle  and  studied  it  from  end  to  end. 

"If  I'm  that  far  behind  Hyacinthe,"  he  indiffer 
ently  acknowledged,  "I  begin  to  fathom  the  secret 
of  my  life  failure.  So  my  morning  hasn't  been  alto 
gether  wasted." 


156  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"But  you  did  steal  the  car  ?"  I  persisted. 

"That  must  be  a  secret  between  us,"  he  said,  with 
a  distinctly  guilty  look  about  the  sky-line,  as  though 
to  make  sure  there  were  no  sheriffs  and  bloodhounds 
on  his  track. 

"What  are  you  doing  here?"  I  demanded,  deter 
mined  to  thrash  the  thing  out,  now  that  it  had  been 
thrust  upon  me. 

"Talking  to  the  most  charming  woman  I've  en 
countered  west  of  the  Great  Lakes,"  he  said  with  an 
ironic  and  yet  a  singularly  engaging  smile.  But  I 
didn't  intend  him  to  draw  a  herring  across  the  trail. 

"I'd  be  obliged  if  you'd  be  sincere,"  I  told  him, 
sitting  up  a  little  straighter  on  Paddy. 

"I  am  sincere,"  he  protested,  putting  away  his  pipe. 

"But  the  things  you're  saying  are  the  things  the 
right  sort  of  person  refrains  from  expressing,  even 
when  he  happens  to  be  the  victim  of  their  operation." 

"Yes,  that's  quite  true,  in  drawing-rooms,"  he  airily 
amended.  "But  this  is  God's  open  and  untrammeled 
prairie." 

"Where  crudeness  is  king,"  I  added. 

"Where  candor  is  worth  more  than  convention,"  he 
corrected,  with  rather  a  wistful  look  in  his  eye.  "And 
where  we  mortals  ought  to  be  at  least  as  urbane  as 
that  really  wonderful  robin-egg  sky  up  there  with  the 
chinook  arch  across  it." 

He  wasn't  flippant  any  more,  and  I  had  a  sense  of 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  157 

trrtimph  in  forcing  his  return  to  sobriety.  I  wanted  to 
ask  him  what  his  name  was,  once  we  were  back  to  earth 
again.  But  as  that  seemed  a  little  too  direct,  I  merely 
inquired  where  his  home  happened  to  be. 

"I've  just  come  from  up  North!"  he  said.  And 
that,  I  promptly  realized,  was  an  evasive  way  of 
answering  an  honest  question,  especially  as  there  was 
a  California  license-number  on  the  front  of  his  car. 

"And  what's  your  business  ?"  I  inquired,  deciding  to 
try  him  out  with  still  one  more  honest  question. 

"I'm  a  windmill  man,"  he  told  me,  as  he  waded  in 
toward  his  dejected-looking  automobile  and  lifted  up 
its  hood.  I  took  him  literally,  for  there  wasn't  any 
thing,  at  the  time,  to  make  me  think  of  Cervantes. 
But  I'd  already  noticed  his  hands,  and  I  felt  sure  they 
weren't  the  hands  of  a  laboring  man.  They  were  long 
and  lean  and  finicky-fingered  hands,  the  sort  that  could 
span  an  octave  much  better  than  they  could  hold  a 
hayfork.  And  I  decided  to  see  him  hoisted  by  his  own 
petard. 

"Then  you're  just  the  man  I'm  looking  for,"  I  told 
him.  He  stopped  for  a  moment  to  look  up  from  the 
bit  of  heavy  rubber-hose  he  was  winding  with  a  stretch 
of  rubber  that  looked  as  though  it  had  been  cut  from 
an  inner  tube. 

"Words  such  as  those  are  honey  to  my  ears,"  he 
said  as  he  went  on  with  his  work.  And  I  saw  it  was 
necessary  to  yank  him  down  to  earth  again. 


158  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"I've  a  broken-down  windmill  over  on  my  ranch," 
I  told  him.  "And  if  you're  what  you  say  you  are,  you 
ought  to  be  able  to  put  it  in  running1  order  for  me." 

"Then  you've  a  ranch?"  he  observed,  stopping  in 
his  work. 

"A  ranch  and  a  husband  and  three  children,"  I  told 
him  with  the  well-paraded  air  of  a  tabby-cat  who's 
dragged  her  last  mouse  into  the  drawing-room.  But 
my  announcement  didn't  produce  the  effect  I'd  counted 
on.  All  I  could  see  on  the  face  of  the  windmill  man 
was  a  sort  of  mild  perplexity. 

"That  only  deepens  the  mystery,"  he  observed,  ap 
parently  as  much  to  himself  as  to  me. 

"What  mystery?"  I  asked. 

"You !"  he  retorted. 

"What's  wrong  with  me?"  I  demanded. 

"You're  so  absurdly  alive  and  audacious  and  sensi 
tive  and  youthful-hearted,  dear  madam !  For  the  life 
of  me  I  can't  quite  fit  you  into  the  narrow  little  frame 
you  mention." 

"Is  it  so  narrow?"  I  inquired,  wondering  why  I 
wasn't  much  more  indignant  at  him.  But  instead  of 
answering  that  question,  he  asked  me  another. 

"Why  hasn't  this  husband  of  yours  fixed  the  wind 
mill?"  he  casually  asked  over  his  shoulder,  as  he  re 
sumed  his  tinkering  on  the  car-engine. 

"My  husband's  work  keeps  him  away  from  home," 
I  explained,  promptly  on  the  defensive. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  159 

"I  thought  so,"  he  announced,  with  the  expression 
of  a  man  who's  had  a  pet  hypothesis  unexpectedly 
confirmed. 

"Then  what  made  you  think  so?"  I  demanded,  with 
a  feeling  that  he  was  in  some  way  being  subtler  than 
I  could  quite  comprehend. 

"Instinct — if  you  care  to  call  it  that,"  he  said  as 
he  stooped  low  over  his  engine.  He  seemed  offensively 
busy  there  for  a  considerable  length  of  time.  I  could 
see  that  he  was  not  what  in  the  old  days  I'd  have 

called  a   window-dresser.      And   I   rather   liked  that 

. 

pretense  of  candor  in  his  make-up,  just  as  I  cottoned 

to  that  melodious  drawl  of  his,  not  altogether  unlike 
Lady  Alicia's,  with  its  untoward  suggestion  of  power 
and  privilege.  He  was  a  man  with  a  mind  of  his  own ; 
there  was  no  denying  that.  I  was  even  compelled  to 
remind  myself  that  with  all  his  coolness  and  suavity 
he  was  still  a  car-thief,  or  perhaps  something  worse. 
And  I  had  no  intention  of  sitting1  there  and  watching 
him  pitch  shut-out  ball. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?"  I  asked,  after 
he'd  finished  his  job  of  bailing  ditch-water  into  his 
car-radiator  with  a  little  collapsible  canvas  bucket. 

He  climbed  into  his  driving-seat,  mud  to  the  knees, 
before  he  answered  me. 

"I'm  going  to  get  Hyacinthe  out  of  this  hole,"  was 
what  he  said.  "And  then  I'm  going  to  fix  that  wind 
mill!" 


160  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"On  what  terms?"  I  inquired. 

"What's  the  matter  with  a  month's  board  and 
keep?"  he  suggested. 

It  rather  took  my  breath  away,  but  I  tried  not  to 
betray  the  fact.  He  was  a  refugee,  after  all,  and  only 
too  anxious  to  go  into  hiding  for  a  few  weeks. 

"Can  you  milk?"  I  demanded,  deciding  to  keep  him 
in  his  place,  from  the  start.  And  he  sadly  acknowl 
edged  that  he  wasn't  able  to  milk.  Windmill  men  sel 
dom  were,  he  casually  asserted. 

"Then  you'll  have  to  make  yourself  handy,  in  other 
ways,"  I  proclaimed  as  he  sat.  appraising  me  from  his 
deep-padded  car-seat. 

"All  right,"  he  said,  as  though  the  whole  thing  were 
settled,  on  the  spot.  But  it  wasn't  so  simple  as  it 
seemed. 

"How  about  this  car?"  I  demanded.  His  eye  met 
mine;  and  I  made  note  of  the  fact  that  he  was  com 
pelled  to  look  away. 

"I  suppose  we'll  have  to  hide  it  somewhere,"  he 
finally  acknowledged. 

"And  how'll  you  hide  a  car  of  that  size  on  the  open 
prairie?"  I  inquired. 

"Couldn't  we  bury  it  ?"  he  asked  with  child-like  sim 
plicity. 

"It's  pretty  well  that  way  now,  isn't  it  ?  But  I  saw 
it  three  miles  off,"  I  reminded  him. 

"Couldn't  we  pile  a  load  of  prairie-hay  over  it?" 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  161 

he  suggested  next,  with  the  natural  cunning  of  the 
criminal.  "Then  they'd  never  suspect." 

"Suspect  what?"  I  asked. 

"Suspect  where  we  got  it,"  he  explained. 

"Kindly  do  not  include  me  in  any  of  your  activities 
of  this  nature,"  I  said  with  all  the  dignity  that  Paddy 
would  permit  of,  for  he  was  getting  restless  by  this 
time. 

"But  you've  included  yourself  in  the  secret,"  he 
tried  to  argue,  with  a  show  of  injured  feelings.  "And 
surely,  after  you've  wormed  that  out  of  me,  you're 
not  going  to  deliver  a  poor  devil  over  to — " 

"You  can  have  perfect  confidence  in  me,"  I  inter 
rupted,  trying  to  be  stately  but  only  succeeding,  I'm 
afraid,  in  being  stiff.  And  he  nodded  and  laughed 
in  a  companionable  and  laisser-faire  sort  of  way  as 
he  started  his  engine  and  took  command  of  the  wheel. 

Then  began  a  battle  which  I  had  to  watch  from  a 
distance  because  Paddy  evinced  no  love  for  that  pur 
ring  and  whining  thing  of  steel  as  it  rumbled  and 
roared  and  thrashed  and  churned  up  the  mud  at  its 
flying  heels.  It  made  the  muskeg  look  like  a  gar 
gantuan  cake-batter,  in  which  it  seemed  to  float  as 
dignified  and  imperturbable  as  a  schooner  in  a  canal- 
lock.  But  the  man  at  the  wheel  kept  his  temper,  and 
reversed,  and  writhed  forward,  and  reversed  again. 
He  even  waved  at  me,  in  a  grim  sort  of  gaiety,  as  he 
rested  his  engine  and  then  went  back  to  the  struggle. 


162  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

He  kept  engaging  and  releasing  his  clutch  until  he 
was  able  to  impart  a  slight  rocking  movement  to  the 
car.  And  again  the  big  motor  roared  and  churned  up 
the  mud  and  again  Paddy  took  to  prancing  and 
pirouetting  like  a  two-year-old.  But  this  time  the 
spinning  rear  wheels  appeared  to  get  a  trace  of  trac 
tion,  flimsy  as  it  was,  for  the  throbbing  gray  mass 
moved  forward  a  little,  subsided  again,  and  once  more 
nosed  a  few  inches  ahead.  Then  the  engine  whined 
in  a  still  higher  key,  and  slowly  but  surely  that  mud- 
covered  mass  emerged  from  the  swale  that  had  sought 
to  engulf  and  possess  it,  emerged  slowly  and  awk 
wardly,  like  a  dinosauros  emerging  from  its  primeval 
ooze. 

The  man  in  the  car  stepped  down  from  his  driving- 
seat,  once  he  was  sure  of  firm  ground  under  his  wheels 
again,  and  walked  slowly  and  wistfully  about  his  res 
urrected  devil-wagon. 

"The  wages  of  sin  is  mud,"  he  said  as  I  trotted  up 
to  him.  "And  how  much  better  it  would  have  been, 
O  Singing  Pine-Tree,  if  I'd  never  taken  that  car !" 

The  poor  chap  was  undoubtedly  a  little  wrong  in 
the  head,  but  likable  withal,  and  not  ill-favored  in 
appearance,  and  a  man  that  one  should  try  to  make 
allowances  for. 

"It  would  have  been  much  better,"  I  agreed,  won 
dering  how  long  it  would  be  before  the  Mounted  Police 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  163 

would  be  tracking  him  down  and  turning  him  to  mak 
ing  brooms  in  the  prison-factory  at  Welrina. 

"Now,  if  you'll  kindly  trot  ahead,"  he  announced 
as  he  relighted  his  little  briar  pipe,  "and  show  me  the 
trail  to  the  ranch  of  the  blighted  windmill,  I'll  idle 
along  behind  you." 

I  resented  the  placidity  with  which  he  was  accept 
ing  a  situation  that  should  have  called  for  consider 
able  meekness  on  his  part.  And  I  sat  there  for  a 
silent  moment  or  two  on  Paddy,  to  make  that  resent 
ment  quite  obvious  to  him. 

"What's  your  name?"  I  asked,  the  same  as  I'd  ask 
the  name  of  any  new  help  that  arrived  at  Alabama 
Ranch. 

"Peter  Ketley,"  he  said,  for  once  both  direct  and 
sober-eyed. 

"All  right,  Peter,"  I  said,  as  condescendingly  as  I 
was  able.  "Just  follow  along,  and  I'll  show  you  where 
the  bunk-house  is." 

It  was  his  grin,  I  suppose,  that  irritated  me.  So 
I  started  off  on  Paddy  and  went  like  the  wind.  I  don't 
know  whether  he  called  it  idling  or  not,  but  once  or 
twice  when  I  glanced  back  at  him  that  touring-car  was 
bounding  like  a  reindeer  over  some  of  the  rougher 
places  in  the  trail,  and  I  rather  fancy  it  got  some  of 
the  mud  shaken  off  its  running-gear  before  it  pulled 
up  behind  the  upper  stable  at  Alabama  Ranch. 


164  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"You  ride  like  a  ritt-meister,"  he  said,  with  an  ap 
provingly  good-natured  wag  of  the  head,  as  he  came 
up  as  close  as  Paddy  would  permit. 

"Danke-schon!"  I  rather  listlessly  retorted.  "And 
if  you  leave  the  car  here,  close  beside  this  hay-stack, 
it'll  probably  not  be  seen  until  after  dinner.  Then 
some  time  this  afternoon,  if  the  coast  is  clear,  you  can 
get  it  covered  up." 

I  was  a  little  sorry,  the  next  moment,  that  I'd 
harped  still  again  on  an  act  which  must  have  become 
painful  for  him  to  remember,  since  I  could  see  his 
face  work  and  his  eye  betray  a  tendency  to  evade  mine. 
But  he  thanked  me,  and  explained  that  he  was  entirely 
in  my  hands. 

Such  being  the  case,  I  was  more  excited  than  I'd 
have  been  willing  to  admit  when  I  led  him  into  the 
shack.  Frontier  life  had  long  since  taught  me  not 
to  depend  too  much  on  appearances,  but  the  right 
sort  of  people,  the  people  who  out  here  are  called 
"good  leather,"  would  remain  the  right  sort  of  people 
in  even  the  roughest  wickiup.  We  may  have  been 
merely  ranchers,  but  I  didn't  want  Peter,  whatever 
his  morals,  to  think  that  we  ate  our  food  raw  off  the 
bone  and  made  fire  by  rubbing  sticks  together. 

Yet  he  must  have  come  pretty  close  to  believing 
that,  unimpeachable  as  his  manners  remained,  for 
Whinnie  had  burned  the  roast  of  veal  to  a  charry  mass, 
the  Twins  were  crying  like  mad,  and  Dinkie  had 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  165 

painted  himself  and  most  of  the  dining-room  table 
with  Worcestershire  sauce.  I  showed  Peter  where  he 
could  wash  up  and  where  he  could  find  a  whisk  to  re 
move  the  dried  mud  from  his  person.  Then  I  hur 
riedly  appeased  my  complaining  bairns,  opened  a  can 
of  beans  to  take  the  place  of  Whinnie's  boiled  pota 
toes,  which  most  unmistakably  tasted  of  yellow  soap, 
and  supplemented  what  looked  dishearteningly  like  a 
Dixon  dinner  with  my  last  carefully  treasured  jar  of 
raspberry  preserve. 

Whinstane  Sandy,  it  is  true,  remained  as  glum  and 
silent  as  a  glacier  through  all  that  meal.  But  my 
new  man,  Peter,  talked  easily  and  uninterruptedly. 
And  he  talked  amazingly  well.  He  talked  about  moun 
tain  goats,  and  the  Morgan  rose- jars  in  the  Metropol 
itan,  and  why  he  disliked  George  Moore,  and  the  dif 
ference  between  English  and  American  slang,  and  why 
English  women  always  wear  the  wrong  sort  of  hats, 
and  the  poetry  in  Indian  names  if  we  only  had  the 
brains  to  understand  'em,  and  how  the  wheat  I'd  man 
ufactured  my  home-made  bread  out  of  was  made  up 
of  cellulose  and  germ  and  endosperm,  and  how  the  al 
cohol  and  carbonic  acid  gas  of  the  fermented  yeast 
affected  the  gluten,  and  how  the  woman  who  could 
make  bread  like  that  ought  to  have  a  specially  de 
signed  decoration  pinned  on  her  apron-front.  Then 
he  played  "Paddy-cake,  paddy-cake,  Baker's  man," 
with  Dinkie,  who  took  to  him  at  once,  and  when  I 


166  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

came  back  from  getting  the  extra  cot  ready  in  the 
bunk-house,  my  infant  prodigy  was  on  the  new  hired 
man's  back,  circling  the  dinner-table  and  shouting 
"Gid-dap,  'ossie,  gid-dap !"  as  he  went,  a  proceeding 
which  left  the  seamed  old  face  of  Whinstane  Sandy 
about  as  blithe  as  a  coffin-lid.  So  I  coldly  informed 
the  newcomer  that  I'd  show  him  where  he  could  put  his 
things,  if  he  had  any,  before  we  went  out  to  look  over 
the  windmill.  And  Peter  rather  astonished  me  by 
lugging  back  from  the  motor-car  so  discreetly  left  in 
the  rear  a  huge  suit-case  of  pliable  pigskin  that 
looked  like  a  steamer-trunk  with  carrying-handles  at 
tached  to  it,  a  laprobe  lined  with  beaver,  a  llama-wool 
sweater  made  like  a  Nor  folk- jacket,  a  chamois-lined 
ulster,  a  couple  of  plaid  woolen  rugs,  and  a  lunch-kit 
in  a  neatly  embossed  leather  case. 

"Quite  a  bit  of  loot,  isn't  it  ?"  he  said,  a  little  red  in 
the  face  from  the  effort  of  portaging  so  pretentious  a 
load. 

That  word  "loot"  stuck  in  my  craw.  It  was  a  pain 
ful  reminder  of  something  that  I'd  been  trying  very 
hard  to  forget. 

"Did  it  come  with  the  car?"  I  demanded. 

"Yes,  it  came  with  the  car,"  he  was  compelled  to 
acknowledge.  "But  it  would  be  exhausting,  don't  you 
see,  to  have  to  tunnel  through  a  hay-stack  every  time 
I  wanted  a  hair-brush !" 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  167 

I  icily  agreed  that  it  would,  scenting  tacit  reproof 
in  that  mildly-put  observation  of  his.  But  I  didn't 
propose  to  be  trifled  with.  I  calmly  led  Mr.  Peter 
Ketley  out  to  where  the  overturned  windmill  tower 
lay  like  a  museum  skeleton  along  its  bed  of  weeds  and 
asked  him  just  what  tools  he'd  need.  It  was  a  simple 
question,  predicating  a  simple  answer.  Yet  he  didn't 
seem  able  to  reply  to  it.  He  scratched  his  close- 
clipped  pate  and  said  he'd  have  to  look  things  ovei, 
and  study  it  out.  Windmills  were  tricky  things,  one 
kind  demanding  this  sort  of  treatment  and  another 
kind  demanding  that. 

"You'll  have  no  trouble,  of  course,  in  raising  the 
tower?"  I  asked,  looking  him  square  in  the  eye.  More 
than  once  I'd  seen  these  windmill  towers  of  galvanized 
steel  girders  put  up  on  the  prairie,  and  I  had  a  very 
good  idea  of  how  the  thing  was  done.  They  were  as 
sembled  lying  on  the  ground,  and  then  a  heavy  plank 
was  bolted  to  the  bottom  side  of  the  tower  base.  This 
plank  was  held  in  place  by  two  big  stakes.  Then  a 
block  and  tackle  was  attached  to  the  upper  part  of  the 
tower,  with  the  running-rope  looped  over  a  tripod  of 
poles,  to  act  as  a  fulcrum,  so  that  when  a  team  of 
horses  was  attached  to  the  tackle  the  tower  pivoted  on 
its  base  and  slowly  rose  in  the  air,  steadied  by  a  couple 
of  guy-ropes  held  out  at  right  angles  to  it. 

"Oh,  no  trouble  at  all,"  replied  the  expert  quite  air- 


168  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

ily.  But  I  noticed  that  his  eye  held  an  especially  ab 
stracted  and  preoccupied  expression. 

"Just  how  is  it  done?"  I  innocently  inquired. 

"Well,  that  all  depends,"  he  sapiently  observed. 
Then,  apparently  nettled  by  my  obviously  superior 
smile,  he  straightened  up  and  said:  "I  want  you  to 
leave  this  entirely  to  me.  It's  my  problem,  and  you've 
no  right  to  be  worried  over  it.  It'll  take  study,  of 
course,  and  it'll  take  time.  Rome  wasn't  built  in  a 
day.  But  before  I  leave  you,  madam,  your  tower  will 
be  up." 

"I  hope  you're  not  giving  yourself  a  life  sentence," 
I  remarked  as  I  turned  and  left  him. 

I  knew  that  he  was  looking  after  me  as  I  went,  but 
I  gave  no  outer  sign  of  that  inner  knowledge.  I  was 
equally  conscious  of  his  movements,  through  the  shack 
window,  when  he  possessed  himself  of  a  hay-fork  and 
with  more  than  one  backward  look  over  his  shoulder 
circled  out  to  where  his  car  still  stood.  He  tooled  it 
still  closer  up  beside  the  hay-stack,  which  he  mounted, 
and  then  calmly  and  cold-bloodedly  buried  under  a 
huge  mound  of  sun-cured  prairie-grass  that  relic  of  a 
past  crime  which  he  seemed  only  too  willing  to  obliter 
ate. 

But  he  was  callous,  I  could  see,  for  once  that  tell 
tale  car  was  out  of  sight,  he  appeared  much  more  in 
terested  in  the  water-blisters  on  his  hands  than  the 
stain  on  his  character.  I  could  even  see  him  inspect 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  169 

his  fingers,  from  time  to  time,  as  he  tried  to  round 
off  the  top  of  his  very  badly  made  stack,  and  test  the 
joints  by  opening  and  closing  them,  as  though  not 
quite  sure  they  were  still  in  working  order.  And  when 
the  stack-making  was  finished  and  he  returned  to  the 
windmill,  circling  about  the  fallen  tower  and  examin 
ing  its  mechanism  and  stepping  off  its  dimensions,  I 
noticed  that  he  kept  feeling  the  small  of  his  back  and 
glancing  toward  the  stack  in  what  seemed  an  attitude 
of  resentment. 

When  Whinnie  came  in  with  one  of  the  teams,  after 
his  day  a-field,  I  noticed  that  Peter  approached  him 
blithely  and  attempted  to  draw  him  into  secret  consul 
tation.  But  Whinnie,  as  far  as  I  could  see,  had  no 
palate  for  converse  with  suspicious-looking  strangers. 
He  walked  several  times,  in  fact,  about  that  mysteri 
ous  new  hay-stack,  and  moved  shackward  more  dour 
and  silent  than  ever.  So  that  evening  the  worthy 
Peter  was  a  bit  silent  and  self-contained,  retiring  early, 
though  I  strongly  suspected,  and  still  suspect,  that 
he'd  locked  himself  in  the  bunk-house  to  remove  unob 
served  all  the  labels  from  his  underwear. 

In  the  morning  his  appearance  was  not  that  of  a 
man  at  peace  with  his  own  soul.  He  even  asked  me  if 
he  might  have  a  horse  and  rig  to  go  in  to  the  nearest 
town  for  some  new  parts  which  he'd  need  for  the 
windmill.  And  he  further  inquired  if  I'd  mind  him 
bringing  back  a  tent  to  sleep  in. 


170  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Did  you  find  the  bunk-house  uncomfortable?"  I 
asked,  noticing  again  the  heavy  look  about  his  eyes. 

"It's  not  the  bunk-house,"  he  admitted.  "It's  that 
old  Caledonian  saw-mill  with  the  rock-ribbed  face." 

"What's  the  matter  with  Whinnie?"  I  demanded, 
with  a  quick  touch  of  resentment.  And  Peter  looked 
up  in  astonishment. 

"Do  you  mean  you've  never  heard  him — and  your 
shack  not  sixty  paces  away?" 

"Heard  him  what?"  I  asked. 

"Heard  htm  snore,"  explained  Peter,  with  a  sigh. 

"Are  you  sure?"  I  inquired,  remembering  the  morn 
ings  when  I'd  had  occasion  to  waken  Whinnie,  always 
to  find  him  sleeping  as  silent  and  placid  as  one  of  my 
own  babies. 

"I  had  eight  hours  of  it  in  which  to  dissipate  any 
doubts,"  he  pointedly  explained. 

This  mystified  me,  but  to  object  to  the  tent,  of 
course,  would  have  been  picayune.  I  had  just  the 
faintest  of  suspicions,  however,  that  the  fair  Peter 
might  never  return  from  Buckhorn,  though  I  tried  to 
solace  myself  with  the  thought  that  the  motor-car  and 
the  beaver-lined  lap-robe  would  at  least  remain  with 
me.  But  my  fears  were  groundless.  Before  supper-time 
Peter  was  back  in  high  spirits,  with  the  needed  new 
parts  for  the  windmill,  and  an  outfit  of  blue  denim 
apparel  for  himself,  and  a  little  red  sweater  for  Dinkie, 
and  an  armful  of  magazines  for  myself. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  171 

Whinnie,  as  he  stood  watching  Peter's  return,  clear 
ly  betrayed  the  disappointment  which  that  return  in 
volved.  He  said  nothing,  but  when  he  saw  my  eye 
upon  him  he  gazed  dourly  toward  his  approaching 
rival  and  tapped  a  weather-beaten  brow  with  one 
stubby  finger.  He  meant,  of  course,  that  Peter  was 
a  little  locoed. 

But  Peter  is  not.  He  is  remarkably  clear-headed 
and  quick-thoughted,  and  if  there's  any  madness  about 
him  it's  a  madness  with  a  deep-laid  method.  The  one 
thing  that  annoys  me  is  that  he  keeps  me  so  continu 
ously  and  yet  so  obliquely  under  observation.  He 
pretends  to  be  studying  out  my  windmill,  but  he  is 
really  trying  to  study  out  its  owner.  Whinnie,  I 
know,  won't  help  him  much.  And  I  refuse  to  rise  to 
his  gaudiest  flies.  So  he's  still  puzzling  over  what  he 
regards  as  an  anomaly,  a  farmerette  who  knows  the 
difference  between  De  Bussey  and  a  side-delivery  horse- 
rake,  a  mother  of  three  children  who  can  ride  a  pinto 
and  play  a  banjo,  a  clodhopper  in  petticoats  who  can 
talk  about  Ragusa  and  Toarmina  and  the  summer 
races  at  Piping  Rock.  But  it's  a  relief  to  converse 
about  something  besides  summer-fallowing  and  break 
ing  and  seed-wheat  and  tractor-oil  and  cows'  teats. 
And  it's  a  stroke  of  luck  to  capture  a  farm-hand  who 
can  freshen  you  up  on  foreign  opera  at  the  same  time 
that  he  campaigns  against  the  domestic  weed! 


Thursday  the  Eleventh 

WE  are  a  peaceful  and  humdrum  family,  very  dif 
ferent  from  the  westerners  of  the  romantic  movies. 
If  we  were  the  cinema  kind  of  ranchers  Pee-Wee  would 
be  cutting  his  teeth  on  a  six-shooter,  little  Dinkie 
would  be  off  rustling  cattle,  Poppsy  would  be  away 
holding  up  the  Transcontinental  Limited,  and  Mumm- 
sie  would  be  wearing  chaps,  toting  a  gun,  and  pretend 
ing  to  the  sheriff  that  her  jail-breaking  brother  was 
not  hidden  in  the  cellar! 

Whereas,  we  are  a  good  deal  like  the  easterners  who 
till  the  soil  and  try  to  make  a  home  for  themselves  and 
their  children,  only  we  are  without  a  great  many  of 
their  conveniences,  even  though  we  do  beat  them  out 
in  the  matter  of  soil.  But  breaking  sod  isn't  so  pictur 
esque  as  breaking  laws,  and  a  plow-handle  isn't  so 
thrilling  to  the  eye  as  a  shooting-iron,  so  it's  mostly 
the  blood-and-thunder  type  of  westerners,  from  the 
ranch  with  the  cow-brand  name,  who  goes  ki-yi-ing 
through  picture  and  story,  advertising  us  as  an  ag 
gregation  of  train-robbers  and  road-agents  and  sher 
iff-rabbits.  And  it's  a  type  that  makes  me  tired. 

The  open  range,  let  it  be  remembered,  is  gone,  and 
the  cowboy  is  going  after  it.  Even  the  broncho,  they 

172 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  173 

tell  me,  is  destined  to  disappear.  It  seems  hard  to 
think  that  the  mustang  will  be  no  more,  the  mustang 
which  Dinky-Dunk  once  told  me  was  the  descendant 
of  the  three  hundred  Arab  and  Spanish  horses  which 
Cortez  first  carried  across  the  Atlantic  to  Mexico.  For 
we,  the  newcomers,  mesh  the  open  range  with  our  barb- 
wire,  and  bring  in  what  Mrs.  Eagle-Moccasin  called 
our  "stink-wagon"  to  turn  the  grass  upside  down  and 
grow  wheat-berries  where  the  buffalo  once  wallowed. 
But  sometimes,  even  in  this  newfangled  work-a-day 
world,  I  find  a  fresh  spirit  of  romance,  quite  as  glam 
orous,  if  one  has  only  the  eye  to  see  it,  as  the  romance 
of  the  past.  In  one  generation,  almost,  we  are  making 
a  home-land  out  of  a  wilderness,  we  are  conjuring  up 
cities  and  threading  the  continent  with  steel,  we  are 
feeding  the  world  on  the  best  and  cleanest  wheat 
known  to  hungry  man.  And  on  these  clear  and  opaline 
mornings  when  I  see  the  prairie-floor  waving  with  its 
harvest  to  be,  and  hear  the  clack  and  stutter  of  the 
tractor  breaking  sod  on  the  outer  quarter  and  leaving 
behind  it  the  serried  furrows  of  umber,  I  feel  there  is 
something  primal  and  poetic  in  the  picture,  something 
mysteriously  moving  and  epic. 

The  weather  has  turned  quite  warm  again,  with 
glorious  spring  days  of  winy  and  heart-tugging  sun 
light  and  cool  and  starry  nights.  In  my  spare  time 
I've  been  helping  Whinnie  get  in  my  "truck"  garden, 
and  Peter,  who  has  reluctantly  forsaken  the  windmill 


174  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

and  learned  to  run  the  tractor,  is  breaking  sod  and 
summer-fallowing  for  me.  For  there  is  always  an 
other  season  to  think  of,  and  I  don't  want  the  tin-can 
of  failure  tied  to  my  spirit's  tail.  As  I  say,  the  days 
slip  by.  Morning  comes,  fresh  as  a  new-minted  nickel, 
we  mount  the  treadmill,  and  somebody  rolls  the  big 
red  ball  off  the  table  and  it's  night  again.  But  open- 
air  work  leaves  me  healthy,  my  children  grow  a-pace, 
and  I  should  be  most  happy. 

But  I'm  not. 

I'm  so  homesick  for  something  which  I  can't  quite 
define  that  it  gives  me  a  misty  sort  of  ache  just  under 
the  fifth  rib.  It's  just  three  weeks  now  since  Dinky- 
Dunk  has  ventured  over  from  Casa  Grande.  If  this 
aloofness  continues,  he'll  soon  need  to  be  formally  in 
troduced  to  his  own  offspring  when  he  sees  them. 

Now  that  I  have  Peter  out  working  on  the  land,  I 
can  safely  give  a  little  more  time  to  my  household. 
But  meals  are  still  more  or  less  a  scramble.  Peter  has 
ventured  the  opinion  that  he  might  get  a  Chinaman 
for  me,  if  he  could  have  a  week  off  to  root  out  the 
right  sort  of  Chink.  But  I  prefer  that  Peter  sticks 
to  his  tractor,  much  as  I  need  help  in  the  house. 

My  new  hired  man  is  still  a  good  deal  of  a  mystery 
to  me,  just  as  I  seem  to  remain  a  good  deal  of  a  mys 
tery  to  him.  I've  been  asking  myself  just  why  it  is 
that  Peter  is  so  easy  to  get  along  with,  and  why,  in 
some  indescribable  way,  he  has  added  to  the  color  of 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  175 

life  since  coming  to  Alabama  Ranch.  It's  mostly,  I 
think,  because  he's  supplied  me  with  the  one  thing  I 
had  sorely  missed,  without  being  quite  conscious  of  it. 
He  has  been  able  to  give  me  mental  companionship, 
at  a  time  when  my  mind  was  starving  for  an  idea  or 
two  beyond  the  daily  drudgery  of  farm-work.  He  has 
given  a  fillip  to  existence,  loath  as  I  am  to  acknowl 
edge  it.  He's  served  to  knock  the  moss  off  my  soul  by 
more  or  less  indirectly  reminding  me  that  all  work  and 
no  play  could  make  Chaddie  McKail  a  very  dull  girl^ 
indeed. 

I  was  rather  afraid,  at  one  time,  that  he  was  going 
to  spoil  it  all  by  making  love  to  me,  after  the  manner 
of  young  Bud  DyrufF,  from  the  Cowen  Ranch,  who, 
because  I  waded  bare-kneed  into  a  warm  little  slough- 
end  when  the  horses  were  having  their  noonday  meal, 
assumed  that  I  could  be  persuaded  to  wade  with  equal 
celerity  into  indiscriminate  affection.  That  rudimen 
tary  and  ingenuous  youth,  in  fact,  became  more  and 
more  offensive  in  his  approaches,  until  finally  I  turned 
on  him.  "Are  you  trying  to  make  love  to  me?"  I  de 
manded.  "The  surest  thing  you  know,"  he  said  with  a 
rather  moonish  smile.  "Then  let  me  tell  you  some-' 
thing,"  I  hissed  out  at  him,  with  my  nose  within  six 
inches  of  his,  "I'm  a  high-strung  hell-cat,  I  am.  I'm 
a  bob-cat,  and  I'm  not  aching  to  be  pawed  by  you  or 
any  other  hare-brained  he-mutt.  So  now,  right  from 
this  minute,  keep  your  distance !  1.=  that  clear?  Keep 


176  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

your  distance,  or  I'll  break  your  head  in  with  this 
neck-yoke !" 

Poor  Bud!  That  rather  blighted  the  flower  of 
Bud's  tender  young  romance,  and  to  this  day  he  effects 
a  wide  detour  when  he  happens  to  meet  me  on  the  trail 
or  in  the  byways  of  Buckhorn. 

But  Peter  Ketley  is  not  of  the  Bud  Dyruff  type. 
He  is  more  complex,  and,  accordingly,  more  disturb 
ing.  For  I  can  see  admiration  in  his  eye,  even  though 
he  no  longer  expresses  it  by  word  of  mouth.  And  there 
is  something  tonic  to  any  woman  in  knowing  that  a 
man  admires  her.  In  my  case,  in  fact,  it's  so  tonic  that 
I've  ordered  some  benzoin  and  cucumber-cream,  and 
think  a  little  more  about  how  I'm  doing  my  hair,  and 
argue  with  myself  that  it's  a  woman's  own  fault  if  she 
runs  to  seed  before  slie's  seen  thirty.  I  may  be  the 
mother  of  three  children,  but  I  still  have  a  hankering 
after  personal  power — and  that  comes  to  women 
through  personal  attractiveness,  disquieting  as  it  may 
be  to  have  to  admit  it.  We  can't  be  big  strong  men 
and  conquer  through  force,  but  our  frivolous  little 
bodies  can  house  the  triumphant  weaknesses  which 
make  men  forget  their  strength. 


Sunday  the  Fourteenth 

I'VE  had  a  talk  with  Peter.    It  simply  had  to  come. 
for  we  couldn't  continue  to  play-act  and  evade  real 
ities.     The  time  arrived  for  getting  down  to  braes 
tacks.     And  even  now  the  brass  tacks  aren't  as  clear 
cut  as  I'd  like  them  to  be. 

But  Peter  is  not  and  never  was  a  car-thief.  Thai 
beetle-headed  suspicion  has  passed  slowly  but  sureh 
away,  like  a  snow-man  confronted  by  a  too  affection- 
rte  sun.  It  slipped  away  from  me  little  by  little,  ind 
began  losing  its  lines,  not  so  much  when  I  found  that 
Peter  carried  a  bill-fold  and  a  well-thumbed  copy  of 
Marius  The  Epicurean  and  walked  about  in  under 
garments  that  were  expensive  enough  for  a  prima 
donna,  but  more  because  I  found  myself  face  to  face 
with  a  Peter-Panish  sort  of  honorableness  that  was 
not  to  be  dissembled.  So  I  cornered  Peter  and  put 
him  through  his  paces. 

I  began  by  telling  him  that  I  didn't  seem  to  know 
a  great  deal  about  him. 

"The  closed  makimono,"  he  cryptically  retorted, 
"is  the  symbol  of  wisdom." 

I  was  ashamed  to  ask  just  what  that  meant,  so  I 
tried  another  tack. 

177 


178  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Folks  are  thrown  pretty  intimately  together,  in 
this  frontier  life,  like  worms  in  a  bait-tin.  So  they 
naturally  need  to  know  what  they're  tangled  up  with." 

Peter,  at  that,  began  to  look  unhappy. 

"Would  you  mind  telling  me  what  brought  you  to 
this  part  of  the  country  ?"  I  asked. 

"Would  you  mind  telling  me  what  brought  you  to 
this  part  of  the  country?"  countered  Peter. 

"My  husband,"  I  curtly  retorted.  And  that  chilled 
him  perceptibly.  But  he  saw  that  I  was  not  to  be 
shuttled  aside. 

"I  was  interested,"  he  explained  with  a  shrug  of 
finality,  "in  the  nesting-ground  of  the  Canada  goose !" 

"Then  you  came  to  the  right  point,"  I  promptly 
retorted.  "For  /  am  it !" 

But  he  didn't  smile,  as  I'd  expected  him  to  do.  He 
seemed  to  feel  that  something  approaching  serious 
ness  was  expected  of  that  talk. 

"I  really  came  because  I  was  more  interested  in  one 
of  your  earliest  settlers,"  he  went  on.  "This  settler, 
I  might  add,  came  to  your  province  some  three  million 
years  ago  and  is  now  being  exhumed  from  one  of  the 
cut-banks  of  the  Red  Deer  River.  He  belongs  to  the 
Mesozoic  order  of  archisaurian  gentlemen  known  as 
Dinosauria,  and  there's  about  a  car-load  of  him.  This 
interest  in  one  of  your  cretaceous  dinosaur  skeletons 
would  imply,  of  course,  that  I'm  wedded  to  science. 
And  I  am,  though  to  nothing  else.  I'm  as  free  as  the 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  179 

wind,  dear  lady,  or  I  wouldn't  be  holidaying  here 
with  a  tractor-plow  that  makes  my  legs  ache  and  a 
prairie  Penelope,  who,  for  some  reason  or  other,  has 
the  power  of  making  my  heart  ache." 

"Verboten!"  I  promptly  interjected. 

Peter  saluted  and  then  sighed. 

"There  are  things  up  here  even  more  interesting 
than  your  Edmonton  formation,"  he  remarked.  "But 
I  was  born  a  Quaker,  you  see,  and  I  can't  get  rid  of 
my  self-control!" 

"I  like  you  for  that,"  I  rather  depressed  him  by 
saying.  "For  I  find  that  one  accepts  you,  Peter,  as 
one  accepts  a  climate.  You're  intimate  in  your  very 
remoteness." 

Peter  looked  at  me  out  of  a  rueful  yet  ruminative 
eye.  But  Whinnie  came  forth  and  grimly  announced 
that  the  Twins  were  going  it.  So  I  had  to  turn 
shackward. 

"You  really  ought  to  get  that  car  out,"  I  called 
over  my  shoulder  to  him,  with  a  head-nod  toward  the 
hay-stack.  And  he  nodded  absently  back  at  me. 


Thursday  the — I  Can't  Remember 

DINKY-DUNK  rode  over  to-day  when  Peter  was  bolt 
ing  some  new  wire  stuts  on  the  windmill  tower  and  I 
was  busy  dry-picking  two  polygamous  old  roosters 
which  Whinnie  had  beheaded  for  me.  My  husband 
attempted  an  offhand  and  happy-go-lucky  air  which, 
I  very  soon  saw,  was  merely  a  mask  to  hide  his 
embarrassment.  He  even  flushed  up  to  the  ears  when 
little  Dinkie  drew  back  for  a  moment  or  two,  as  any 
child  might  who  didn't  recognize  his  own  father, 
though  he  later  solicitously  tiptoed  to  the  sleeping- 
porch  where  the  Twins  were  having  their  nap,  and 
remarked  that  they  were  growing  prodigiously. 

It  was  all  rather  absurd.  But  when  one  member 
of  this  life-partnership  business  is  stiff  with  con 
straint,  you  can't  expect  the  other  member  to  fall  on 
his  neck  and  weep.  And  Dinky-Dunk,  for  all  his 
nonchalance,  looked  worried  and  hollow-eyed.  He 
was  in  the  saddle  again,  and  headed  baok  for  Casa 
Grande,  when  he  caught  sight  of  Peter  at  work  on 
the  windmill.  So  he  loped  over  to  my  hired  man  and 
had  a  talk  with  him.  What  they  talked  about  I 
couldn't  tell,  of  course,  but  it  seemed  a  casual  and 
friendly  enough  conversation.  Peter  in  his  blue- 
ISO 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  181 

jeans,  dirt-marked  and  oil-stained,  and  with  a  wrench 
in  his  hand,  looked  like  an  I.  W.  W.  agitator  who'd 
fallen  on  evil  days. 

I  felt  tempted  to  sally  forth  and  reprove  Dinky- 
Dunk  for  wasting  the  time  of  my  hired  help.  But 
that,  I  remembered  in  time,  might  be  treading  on 
rather  thin  ice,  or,  what  would  be  even  worse,  might 
seem  like  snooping.  And  speaking  of  snooping, 
reminds  me  that  a  few  nights  ago  I  listened  carefully 
at  the  open  window  of  the  bunk-house  where  Whin- 
stane  Sandy  was  deep  in  repose.  Not  a  sound,  not  a 
trace  of  a  snore,  arose  from  Whinnie's  cot. 

So  my  suspicions  were  confirmed.  That  old  sour 
dough  had  deliberately  lain  awake  and  tried  to  trum 
pet  my  second  man  from  the  precincts  which  Whinnie 
felt  he'd  already  preempted.  He  had  attempted  to 
snore  poor  Peter  off  the  map  and  away  from  Ala 
bama  Ranch ! 


Saturday  the  Thirtieth 

THE  sedatest  lives,  I  suppose,  have  their  occasional 
Big  Surprises.  Life,  at  any  rate,  has  just  treated  me 
to  one.  Lady  Alicia  Newland's  English  maid,  known 
as  Struthers,  arrived  at  Alabama  Ranch  yesterday 
afternoon  and  asked  if  I'd  take  her  in.  She'd  had 
some  words,  she  said,  with  her  mistress,  and  didn't 
propose  to  be  treated  like  the  scum  of  the  earth  by 
anybody. 

So  the  inevitable  has  come  about.  America,  the 
liberalizer,  has  touched  the  worthy  Struthers  with 
her  wand  of  democracy  and  transformed  her  from  a 
silent  machine  of  service  into  a  Vesuvian  female  with 
a  mind  and  a  voice  of  her  own. 

I  told  Struthers,  who  was  still  a  bit  quavery  and 
excited,  to  sit  down  and  we'd  talk  the  matter  over,  for 
rustling  maids,  in  a  land  where  they're  as  scarce  as 
hen's  teeth,  is  a  much  graver  crime  than  rustling 
cattle.  Yet  if  Lady  Allie  had  taken  my  husband  away 
from  me,  I  didn't  see  why,  in  the  name  of  poetic  jus 
tice,  I  shouldn't  appropriate  her  hand-maid. 

And  Struthers,  I  found,  was  quite  definite  as  to  her 
intentions.  She  is  an  expert  needle-woman,  can 
do  plain  cooking,  and  having  been  a  nurse-maid  in 

182 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  183 

her  younger  days,  is  quite  capable  of  looking  after 
children,  even  American  children.  I  winced  at  that, 
naturally,  and  winced  still  harder  when  she  stipulated 
that  she  must  have  four  o'clock  tea  every  afternoon, 
and  every  alternate  Sunday  morning  off  for  the  pur 
pose  of  "saging"  her  hair,  which  was  a  new  one  on 
me.  But  I  weighed  the  pros  and  cons,  very  deliber 
ately,  and  discussed  her  predicament  very  candidly, 
and  the  result  is  that  Struthers  is  now  duly  installed 
at  Alabama  Ranch.  Already,  in  fact,  that  efficient 
hand  of  hers  has  left  its  mark  on  the  shack.  Her 
muffins  this  morning  were  above  reproach  and  to 
morrow  we're  to  have  Spotted  Dog  pudding.  But 
already,  I  notice,  she  is  casting  sidelong  glances  in 
the  direction  of  poor  Peter,  to  whom,  this  evening  at 
supper,  she  deliberately  and  unquestionably  donated 
the  fairest  and  fluffiest  quarter  of  the  lemon  pie.  I 
have  no  intention  of  pumping  the  lady,  but  I  can  see 
that  there  are  certain  matters  pertaining  to  Casa 
Grande  which  she  is  not  averse  to  easing  her  mind  of. 
I  am  not  quite  sure,  in  fact,  that  I  could  find  it  pos 
sible  to  lend  an  ear  to  the  gossipings  of  a  servant. 
And  yet — and  yet,  there  are  a  few  things  I'd  like  to 
find  out.  And  dignity  may  still  be  slaughtered  on  the 
altar  of  curiosity. 


Sunday  the  Sixth 

Now  that  I've  had  a  breathing-spell,  I've  been  sit 
ting  back  and  mentally  taking  stock.  The  showers  of 
last  week  have  brought  the  needed  moisture  for  our 
wheat,  which  is  looking  splendid.  Our  oats  are  not 
quite  so  promising,  but  everything  will  depend  upon 
the  season.  The  season,  in  fact,  holds  our  fate  and 
our  fortune  in  its  lap.  Those  ninety  days  that  include 
June  and  July  and  August  are  the  days  when  the 
northwest  farmer  is  forever  on  tiptoe  watching  the 
weather.  It's  his  time  of  trial,  his  period  of  crisis, 
when  our  triple  foes  of  Drought  and  Hail  and  Fire 
may  at  any  moment  creep  upon  him.  It  keeps  one  on 
the  qui  vive,  making  life  a  gamble,  giving  the  zest 
of  the  uncertain  to  existence,  and  leaving  no  room  for 
boredom.  It's  the  big  drama  which  even  dwarfs  the 
once  momentous  emotions  of  love  and  hate  and  jeal 
ousy.  For  when  the  Big  Rush  is  on,  I've  noticed, 
husbands  are  apt  to  neglect  their  wives,  and  lovers 
forget  their  sweethearts,  and  neighbors  their  enmi 
ties.  Let  the  world  go  hang,  but  before  and  above 
everything  else,  save  your  crop! 

Yet,  as  I  was  saying,  I've  been  taking  stock.  It's 
clear  that  I  should  have  more  cattle.  And  if  all  goes 

184 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  185 

well,  I  want  a  bank-barn,  the  same  as  they  have  in  the 
East,  with  cement  flooring  and  modern  stalling.  And 
I've  got  to  comb  over  my  herd,  and  get  rid  of  the 
boarders  and  hatracks,  and  acquire  a  blooded  bull  for 
Alabama  Ranch,  to  improve  the  strain.  Two  of  my 
milkers  must  go  for  beef,  as  well  as  several  scrub 
springers  which  it  would  be  false  economy  to  hold. 
I've  also  got  to  do  something  about  my  hogs.  They 
are  neither  "easy  feeders"  nor  good  bacon  types. 
With  them,  too,  I  want  a  good  sire,  a  pure-bred  York 
shire  or  Berkshire.  And  I  must  have  cement  troughs 
and  some  movable  fencing,  so  that  my  young  shoats 
may  have  pasture-crop.  For  there  is  money  in  pigs, 
and  no  undue  labor,  provided  you  have  them  prop 
erly  fenced. 

My  chickens,  which  have  been  pretty  well  caring 
for  themselves,  have  done  as  well  as  could  be  expected. 
I've  tried  to  get  early  hatchings  from  my  brooders, 
for  pullets  help  out  with  winter  eggs  when  prices  are 
high,  laying  double  what  a  yearling  does  during  the 
cold  months.  My  yellow-beaks  and  two-year-olds  I 
shall  kill  off  as  we're  able  to  eat  them,  for  an  old  hen 
is  a  useless  and  profitless  possession  and  I  begin  to 
understand  why  lordly  man  has  appropriated  that 
phrase  as  a  term  of  contempt  for  certain  of  my  sex. 
I'm  trading  in  my  eggs — and  likewise  my  butter — at 
Buckhorn,  selling  the  Number  One  grade  and  holding 
back  the  Number  Twos  for  home  consumption.  There 


186  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

is  an  amazing  quantity  of  Number  Twos,  because 
of  "stolen  nests"  and  the  lack  of  proper  coops  and 
runs.  But  we  seem  to  get  away  with  them  all.  Dinkie 
now  loves  them  and  would  eat  more  than  one  at  a  time 
•if  I'd  let  him. 

The  gluttony  of  the  normal  healthy  three-year-old 
child,  by  the  way,  is  something  incredible.  Dinkie 
reminds  me  more  and  more  of  a  robin  in  cherry-time. 
He  stuffs  sometimes,  until  his  little  tummy  is  as  tight 
as  a  drum,  and  I  verily  believe  he  could  eat  his  own 
weight  in  chocolate  blanc-mange,  if  I'd  let  him.  Eat 
ing,  with  him,  is  now  a  serious  business,  demanding 
no  interruption:*  or  distractions.  Once  he's  decently 
filled,  however,  his  greediness  takes  the  form  of 
exterior  application.  He  then  rejoices  to  plaster  as 
much  as  he  can  in  his  hair  and  ears  and  on  his  face, 
until  he  looks  like  a  cross  between  a  hod-carrier  and 
a  Fiji-Islander.  And  grown  men,  I've  concluded,  are 
very  much  the  same  with  their  appetite  of  love.  They 
come  to  you  with  a  brave  showing  of  hunger,  but 
when  you've  given  until  no  more  remains  to  be  given, 
they  become  finicky  and  capricious,  and  lose  their 
interest  in  the  homely  old  porridge-bowl  which  looked 
all  loveliness  to  them  before  they  had  made  it 
theirs. 

This  afternoon,  tired  of  scheming  and  conceiting 
for  the  future,  I  had  a  longing  to  be  frivolous  and 
care- free.  So  I  got  out  the  old  rusty-rimmed  banjo, 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  187 

tuned  her  up,  and  sat  on  an  overturned  milk-bucket, 
with  Dinkie  and  Bobs  and  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  for 
an  audience. 

I  was  leaning  back  with  my  knees  crossed,  strum 
ming  out  Turkey  in  the  Straw  when  Peter  walked  up 
and  sat  down  between  Bobs  and  Dinkie.  So  I  gave 
him  The  Whistling  Coon,  while  the  Twins  lay  there 
positively  pop-eyed  with  delight,  and  he  joined  in 
with  me  on  Dixie,  singing  in  a  light  and  somewhat 
throaty  baritone.  Then  we  swung  on  to  There's  a 
Hole  in  the  Bottom  of  the  Sea,  which  must  always  be 
sung  to  a  church-tune,  and  still  later  to  that  dolorous 
ballad,  Oh,  Bury  Me  Not  on  the  Lone  Prair-hee! 
Then  we  tried  a  whistling  duet  with  banjo  accom 
paniment,  pretty  well  murdering  the  Tinker's  Song 
from  Robin  Hood  until  Whinstane  Sandy,  who  was 
taking  his  Sabbath  bath  in  the  bunk-house,  loudly 
opened  the  window  and  stared  out  with  a  dourly 
reproving  countenance,  which  said  as  plain  as  words: 
"This  is  nae  the  day  for  whustlin',  folks !" 

But  little  Dinkie,  obviously  excited  by  the  music, 
shouted  "A-more !  A-more !"  so  we  went  on,  disregard 
ing  Whinnie  and  the  bunk-house  window  and  Struth- 
ers'  acrid  stare  from  the  shack-door.  I  was  in  the  mid 
dle  of  Fay  Templeton's  lovely  old  Rosie,  You  Are  My 
Posey,  when  Lady  Alicia  rode  up,  as  spick  and  span 
as  though  she'd  just  pranced  off  Rotten  Row.  And 
as  I'd  no  intention  of  showing  the  white  feather  to 


188  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

her  ladyship,  I  kept  right  on  to  the  end.  Then  1 
looked  up  and  waved  the  banjo  at  her  where  she  sat 
stock-still  on  her  mount.  There  was  an  enigmatic 
look  on  her  face,  but  she  laughed  and  waved  back, 
whereupon  Peter  got  up,  and  helped  her  dismount  as 
she  threw  her  reins  over  the  pony's  head. 

I  noticed  that  her  eye  rested  very  intently  on  Peter's 
face  as  I  introduced  him,  and  he  in  turn  seemed  to 
size  the  stately  newcomer  up  in  one  of  those  lightning- 
flash  appraisals  of  his.  Then  Lady  Allie  joined  our 
circle,  and  confessed  that  she'd  been  homesick  for  a 
sight  of  the  kiddies,  especially  Dinkie,  whom  she  took 
on  her  knee  and  regarded  with  an  oddly  wistful  and 
abstracted  manner. 

My  hired  man,  I  noticed,  was  in  no  way  intimidated 
by  a  title  in  our  midst,  but  wagered  that  Lady  Allie's 
voice  would  be  a  contralto  and  suggested  that  we  all 
try  On  the  Road  to  Mandalay  together.  But  Lady 
Allie  acknowledged  that  she  had  neither  a  voice  nor 
an  ear,  and  would  prefer  listening.  We  couldn't 
remember  the  words,  however,  and  the  song  wasn't 
much  of  a  success.  I  think  the  damper  came  when 
Struthers  stepped  out  into  full  view,  encased  in  my 
big  bungalow-apron  of  butcher's  linen.  Lady  Alicia, 
after  the  manner  of  the  English,  saw  her  without  see 
ing  her.  There  wasn't  the  flicker  of  an  eyelash,  or  a 
moment's  loss  of  poise.  But  it  seemed  too  much  like 
a  Banquo  at  the  feast  to  go  on  with  our  banjo-strum? 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  189 

ming,  and  I  attempted  to  bridge  the  hiatus  by  none 
too  gracefully  inquiring  how  things  were  getting 
along  over  at  Casa  Grande.  Lady  Allie's  contem 
plative  eye,  I  noticed,  searched  my  face  to  see  if  there 
were  any  secondary  significances  to  that  bland  inquiry. 

"Everything  seems  to  be  going  nicely,"  she 
acknowledged.  Then  she  rather  took  the  wind  out  of 
my  sails  by  adding :  "But  I  really  came  over  to  see  if 
you  wouldn't  dine  with  me  to-morrow  at  seven.  Bring 
the  children,  of  course.  And  if  Mr. — er — Ketley  can 
come  along,  it  will  be  even  more  delightful." 

Still  again  I  didn't  intend  to  be  stumped  by  her 
ladyship,  so  I  said  that  I'd  be  charmed,  without  one 
second  of  hesitation,  and  Peter,  with  an  assumption  of 
vast  gravity,  agreed  to  come  along  if  he  didn't  have 
to  wear  a  stiff  collar  and  a  boiled  shirt.  And  he  con 
tinued  to  rag  Lady  Allie  in  a  manner  which  seemed 
to  leave  her  a  little  bewildered.  But  she  didn't  alto 
gether  dislike  it,  I  could  see,  for  Peter  has  the  power 
of  getting  away  with  that  sort  of  thing. 


Tuesday  the  Eighth 

LADY  ALICIA'S  dinner  is  over  and  done  with.  I 
can't  say  that  it  was  a  howling  success.  And  I'm  still 
very  much  in  doubt  as  to  its  raison  d'etre,  as  the 
youthful  society  reporters  express  it.  At  first  I 
thought  it  might  possibly  be  to  flaunt  my  lost  gran 
deur  in  my  face.  And  then  I  argued  with  myself 
that  it  might  possibly  be  to  exhibit  Sing  Lo,  the  new 
Chink  man-servant  disinterred  from  one  of  the  Buck- 
horn  laundries.  And  still  later  I  suspected  that  it 
might  be  a  sort  of  demonstration  of  preparedness, 
like  those  carefully  timed  naval  parades  on  the  part 
of  one  of  the  great  powers  disquieted  by  the  activities 
of  a  restive  neighbor.  And  then  came  still  another 
suspicion  that  it  might  possibly  be  a  move  to  precip 
itate  the  impalpable,  as  it  were,  to  put  certain  family 
relationships  to  the  touch,  and  make  finally  certain 
as  to  how  things  stood. 

But  that,  audacious  as  I  felt  Lady  Alicia  to  be, 
didn't  quite  hold  water.  It  didn't  seem  any  more  rea 
sonable  than  my  earlier  theories.  And  all  I'm  really 
certain  of  is  that  the  dinner  was  badly  cooked  and 
badly  served,  rather  reminding  me  of  a  chow-house 

190 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  191 

meal  on  the  occasion  of  a  Celestial  New  Year.  We  all 
wore  our  every-day  clothes  (with  Peter's  most  care 
fully  pressed  and  sponged  by  the  intriguing  Struthers) 
and  the  Twins  were  put  asleep  up-stairs  in  their  old 
nursery  and  Dinkie  was  given  a  place  at  the  table  with 
two  sofa-cushions  to  prop  him  up  in  his  armchair  (and 
acted  like  a  little  barbarian)  and  Peter  nearly  broke 
his  neck  to  make  himself  as  pleasant  as  possible,  chat 
tering  like  a  magpie  .and  reminding  me  of  a  circus- 
band  trying  to  make  the  crowd  forget  the  bareback 
rider  who's  just  been  carried  out  on  a  stretcher.  But 
Constraint  was  there,  all  the  while,  first  in  the  form 
of  Dinky-Dunk's  unoccupied  chair,  which  remained 
that  way  until  dinner  was  two-thirds  through,  and 
then  in  the  form  of  Dinky-Dunk  himself,  whose 
explanation  about  some  tractor-work  keeping  him  late 
didn't  quite  ring  true.  His  harried  look,  I  must 
acknowledge,  wore  away  with  the  evening,  but  to  me 
at  least  it  was  only  too  plain  that  he  was  there  under 
protest. 

I  did  my  utmost  to  stick  to  the  hale-fellow-well-met 
role,  but  it  struck  me  as  uncommonly  like  dancing  on 
a  coffin.  And  for  all  his  garrulity,  I  know,  Peter  was 
really  watching  us  with  the  eye  of  a  hawk. 

"I'm  too  old  a  dog,"  I  overheard  him  telling  Lady 
Alicia,  "ever  to  be  surprised  at  the  crumbling  of  an 
ideal  or  the  disclosure  of  a  skeleton." 

I  don't  know  what  prompted  that  statement,  but  it 


192  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

had  the  effect  of  making  Lady  Allie  go  off  into  one 
of  her  purl-two  knit-two  trances. 

"I  think  you  English  people,"  I  heard  him  telling 
her  a  little  later,  "have  a  tendency  to  carry  modera 
tion  to  excess." 

"I  don't  quite  understand  that,"  she  said,  lighting 
what  must  have  been  about  her  seventeenth  cigarette. 

"I  mean  you're  all  so  abnormally  normal,"  retorted 
Peter — which  impressed  me  as  being  both  clever  and 
true.  And  when  Lady  Allie,  worrying  over  that 
epigram,  became  as  self-immured  as  a  Belgian  milk- 
dog,  Peter  cocked  an  eye  at  me  as  a  robin  cocks  an 
eye  at  a  fish-worm,  and  I  had  the  audacity  to  murmur 
across  the  table  at  him,  "Lady  Barbarina."  Where 
upon  he  said  back,  without  batting  an  eye:  "Yes,  I 
happen  to  have  read  a  bit  of  Henry  James." 

But  dinner  came  to  an  end  and  we  had  coffee  in 
what  Lady  Alicia  had  rechristened  the  Lounge,  and 
then  made  doleful  efforts  to  be  light  and  airy  over 
a  game  of  bridge,  whereat  Dinky-Dunk  lost  fourteen 
dollars  of  his  hard-earned  salary  and  twice  I  had  to 
borrow  six  bits  from  Peter  to  even  up  with  Lady 
Allie,  who  was  inhospitable  enough  to  remain  the 
winner  of  the  evening.  And  I  wasn't  sorry  when  those 
devastating  Twins  of  mine  made  their  voices  heard 
and  thrust  before  me  an  undebatable  excuse  for  trek 
king  homeward.  And  another  theatricality  presented 
itself  when  Dinky-Dunk  announced  that  he'd  take  us 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  193 

back  in  the  car.  But  we  had  White-Face  and  Tumble- 
Weed  and  our  sea-going  spring-wagon,  with  plenty 
of  rugs,  and  there  was  no  way,  of  course,  of  putting 
a  team  and  rig  in  the  tonneau.  So  I  made  my  adieux 
and  planted  Peter  meekly  in  the  back  seat  with  little 
Dinkie  to  hold  and  took  the  reins  myself. 

I  started  home  with  a  lump  in  my  throat  and  a 
weight  in  my  heart,  feeling  it  really  wasn't  a  home 
that  I  was  driving  toward.  But  it  was  one  of  those 
crystal-clear  prairie  nights  when  the  stars  were  like 
electric-lights  shining  through  cut-glass  and  the  air 
was  like  a  razor-blade  wrapped  in  panne-velvet.  It 
took  you  out  of  yourself.  It  reminded  you  that  you 
were  only  an  infinitely  small  atom  in  the  immensity  of 
a  crowded  big  world,  and  that  even  your  big  world  was 
merely  a  microscopic  little  mote  lost  amid  its  un 
counted  millions  of  sister-motes  in  the  infinitudes  of 
time  and  space. 

"Nitchevo!"  I  said  out  loud,  as  I  stopped  on  the 
trail  to  readjust  and  wrap  the  Twins  in  their  rug- 
lined  laundry-basket. 

"In  that  case,"  Peter  unexpectedly  remarked,  "I'd 
like  to  climb  into  that  front  seat  with  you." 

"Why?"  I  asked,  not  greatly  interested. 

"Because  I  want  to  talk  to  you,"  was  Peter's 
answer. 

"But  I  think  I'd  rather  not  talk,"  I  told  him. 

"Whv  ?"  it  was  his  turn  to  inquire. 


194  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Isn't  it  a  rum  enough  situation  as  it  is?"  I  de 
manded.  For  Peter,  naturally,  had  not  used  his  eyes 
for  nothing  that  night. 

But  Peter  didn't  wait  for  my  permission  to  climb 
into  the  front  seat.  He  plumped  himself  down  beside 
me  and  sat  there  with  my  first-born  in  his  arms  and 
one-half  of  the  mangy  old  buffalo-robe  pulled  up  over 
his  knees. 

"I  think  I'm  beginning  to  see  light,"  he  said,  after 
a  rather  long  silence,  as  we  went  spanking  along  the 
prairie-trail  with  the  cold  air  fanning  our  faces. 

"I  wish  I  did,"  I  acknowledged. 

"You're  not  very  happy,  are  you?"  he  ventured, 
in  a  voice  with  just  the  slightest  trace  of  vibrato  in  it. 

But  I  didn't  see  that  anything  was  to  be  gained  by 
parading  my  troubles  before  others.  And  life,  of 
late,  had  been  teaching  me  to  consume  my  own  smoke. 
So  I  kept  silent. 

"Do  you  like  me,  Peter?"  I  suddenly  asked.  For 
I  felt  absurdly  safe  with  Peter.  He  has  a  heart,  I 
know,  as  clean  as  an  Alpine  village,  and  the  very  sense 
of  his  remoteness,  as  I'd  already  told  him,  gives  birth 
to  a  sort  of  intimacy,  like  the  factory  girl  who  throws 
a  kiss  to  the  brakeman  on  the  through  freight  and 
remains  Artemis-on-ice  to  the  delicatessen-youth  from 
whom  she  buys  her  supper  "weenies." 

"What  do  you  suppose  I've  been  hanging  around 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  195 

for?"  demanded  Peter,  with  what  impressed  me  as  an 
absence  of  finesse. 

"To  fix  the  windmill,  of  course,"  I  told  him.  "Un 
less  you  have  improper  designs  on  Struthers !" 

He  laughed  a  little  and  looked  up  at  the  Great  Bear. 

"If  it's  true,  as  they  say,  that  Fate  weaves  in  the 
dark,  I  suppose  that's  why  she  weaves  so  badly,"  he 
observed,  after  a  short  silence. 

"She  undoubtedly  drops  a  stitch  now  and  then,"  I 
agreed,  wondering  if  he  was  thinking  of  me  or 
Struthers  when  he  spoke.  "But  you  do  like  me, 
don't  you?" 

"I  adore  you,"  admitted  Peter  quite  simply. 

"In  the  face  of  all  these?"  I  said  with  a  contented 
little  laugh,  nodding  toward  my  three  children. 

"In  the  face  of  everything,"  asserted  Peter. 

"Then  I  wish  you'd  do  something  for  me,"  I 
told  him. 

"What?" 

"Break  that  woman's  heart,"  I  announced,  with  p. 
backward  nod  of  my  head  toward  Casa  Grande. 

"I'd  much  rather  break  yours"  he  coolly  con 
tended.  "Or  I'd  prefer  knowing  I  had  the  power  of 
doing  it." 

I  shook  my  head.  "It  can't  be  done,  Peter.  And 
it  can't  even  be  pretended.  Imagine  the  mother  of 
twins  trying  to  flirt  with  a  man  even  as  nice  as  you 


196  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

are !  It  would  be  as  bad  as  an  elephant  trying  to  be 
kittenish  and  about  as  absurd  as  one  of  your  dino- 
sauria  getting  up  and  trying  to  do  a  two-step.  And 
I'm  getting  old  and  prosy,  Peter,  and  if  I  pretend 
to  be  skittish  now  and  then  it's  only  to  mask  the  fact 
that  I'm  on  the  shelf,  that  I've  eaten  my  pie  and  that 
before  long  I'll  be  dyeing  my  hair  every  other  Sunday, 
the  same  as  Struthers,  and " 

"Rot !"  interrupted  Peter.     "All  rot !" 

"Why  rot?"  I  demanded. 

"Because  to  me  you're  the  embodiment  of  undying 
youth,"  asserted  the  troubadour  beside  me.  It  was 
untrue,  and  it  was  improper,  but  for  a  moment  or  two 
at  least  my  hungry  heart  closed  about  that  speech 
the  same  as  a  child's  hand  closes  about  a  chocolate- 
drop.  Women  are  made  that  way.  But  I  had  to 
keep  to  the  trail. 

"Supposing  we  get  back  to  earth,"  I  suggested. 

"What's  the  matter  with  the  way  we  were  head 
ing?"  countered  the  quiet-eyed  Peter. 

"It  doesn't  seem  quite  right,"  I  argued.  And  he 
laughed  a  little  wistfully. 

"What  difference  does  it  make,  so  long  as  we're 
happy?"  he  inquired.  And  I  tried  to  reprove  him  with 
a  look,  but  I  don't  think  it  quite  carried  in  the  misty 
starlight. 

"I  can't  say,"  I  told  him,  "that  I  approve  of  your 
ro<>  soning." 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  197 

"That's  just  the  point,"  he  said  with  a  slightly 
more  reckless  note  in  his  laughter.  "It  doesn't  pre 
tend  to  be  reasoning.  It's  more  like  that  abandoning 
of  all  reasoning  which  brings  us  our  few  earthly 
glories." 

"Cogito,  ergo  sum,"  I  announced,  remembering  my 
Descartes. 

"Well,  I'm  going  to  keep  on  just  the  same,"  pro- 
tested  Peter. 

"Keep  on  at  what?"  I  asked. 

"At  thinking  you're  adorable,"  was  his  reply. 

"Well,  the  caterpillars  have  been  known  to  stop  the 
train,  but  you  must  remember  that  it's  rather  hard  on 
the  caterpillars,"  I  proclaimed  as  we  swung  off  the 
trail  and  headed  in  for  Alabama  Ranch. 


Sunday  the  Thirteenth 

ON  Friday  night  there  were  heavy  showers  again, 
and  now  Whinnie  reports  that  our  Marquis  wheat 
couldn't  look  better  and  ought  to  run  well  over  forty 
bushels  to  the  acre.  We  are  assured  of  sufficient 
moisture,  but  our  two  enemies  yclept  Fire  and  Hail 
remain.  I  should  like  to  have  taken  out  hail  insurance, 
but  I  haven't  the  money  on  hand. 

I  can  at  least  make  sure  of  my  fire-guards.  Turn 
ing  those  essential  furrows  will  be  good  training  for 
Peter.  That  individual,  by  the  way,  has  been  quieter 
and  more  ruminative  of  late,  and,  if  I'm  not  mistaken, 
a  little  gentler  in  his  attitude  toward  me.  Yet  there's 
not  a  trace  of  pose  about  him,  and  I  feel  sure  he 
wouldn't  harm  the  morals  of  a  lady-bug.  He's  kind 
and  considerate,  and  doing  his  best  to  be  a  good  pal. 
Whinnie,  by  the  way,  regards  me  with  a  mildly 
reproving  eye,  and  having  apparently  concluded  that 
I  am  a  renegade,  is  concentrating  his  affection  on 
Dinkie,  for  whom  he  is  whittling  out  a  new  Noah's 
Ark  in  his  spare  time.  He  is  also  teaching  Dinkie  to 
ride  horseback,  lifting  him  up  to  the  back  of  either 
Nip  or  Tuck  when  they  come  for  water  and  letting 
him  ride  as  far  as  the  stable.  He  looks  very  small 
up  on  that  big  animal. 

198 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  199 

At  night,  now  |hat  the  evenings  are  so  long, 
Whinnie  takes  my  laddie  on  his  knee  and  tells  him 
stories,  stories  which  he  can't  possibly  understand, 
I'm  sure,  but  Dinkie  likes  the  drone  of  Whinnie's 
voice  and  the  feel  of  those  rough  old  arms  about  his 
little  body.  We  all  hunger  for  affection.  The  idiot 
who  said  that  love  was  the  bitters  in  the  cocktail  of 
life  wasn't  either  a  good  liver  or  a  good  philosopher. 
For  love  is  really  the  whole  cocktail.  Take  that  away, 
and  nothing  is  left. 

I  seem  to  be  getting  moodier,  as  summer  advances. 
Alternating  waves  of  sourness  and  tenderness  sweep 
through  me,  and  if  I  wasn't  a  busy  woman  I'd  pos 
sibly  make  a  fine  patient  for  one  of  those  fashionable 
nerve-specialists  who  don't  flourish  on  the  prairie. 

But  I  can't  quite  succeed  in  making  myself  as 
miserable  as  I  feel  I  ought  to  be.  There  seems  to 
be  a  great  deal  happening  all  about  us,  and  yet  noth 
ing  ever  happens.  My  children  are  hale  and  hearty, 
my  ranch  is  fat  with  its  promise  of  harvest,  and  I  am 
surrounded  by  peop,«i  who  love  and  respect  me.  But 
it  doesn't  seem  enough.  Coiled  in  my  heart  is  one 
small  disturbing  viper  which  I  can  neither  scotch  nor 
kill.  Yet  I  decline  to  be  the  victim  of  anything  as 
ugly  as  jealousy.  For  jealousy  is  both  poisonous 
and  pathetic.  But  I'd  like  to  choke  that  woman ! 

Yesterday  Lady  Alicia,  who  is  now  driving  her  own 
car,  picked  up  Peter  from  his  fire-guard  work  and 


200  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

carried  him  off  on  an  experimental  ride  to  see  what 
was  wrong  with  her  carbureter — the  same  old  car 
bureter!  She  let  him  out  at  the  shack,  on  her  way 
home,  and  Struthers  witnessed  the  tail  end  of  that 
enlevement.  It  spoilt  her  day  for  her.  She  furned 
and  fretted  and  made  things  fly — for  Struthers 
always  works  hardest,  I've  noticed,  when  in  a  temper 
— and  surrendering  to  the  corroding  tides  which  were 
turning  her  gentle  nature  into  gall  and  wormwood, 
obliquely  and  tremulously  warned  the  somewhat 
startled  Peter  against  ungodly  and  frivolous  females 
who  'ave  no  right  to  be  corrupting  simple-minded 
colonials  and  who  'ave  no  scruples  against  playing 
with  men  the  same  as  a  cat  would  play  with  a  mouse. 

"So  be  warned  in  time,"  I  sternly  exclaimed  to 
Peter,  when  I  accidentally  overheard  the  latter  end 
of  Struthers'  exhortation. 

"And  there  are  others  as  ought  to  be  warned  in 
time!"  was  Struthers'  Parthian  arrow  as  she  flounced 
off  to  turn  the  omelette  which  she'd  left  to  scorch  on 
the  cook-stove. 

Peter's  eye  met  mine,  but  neither  of  us  said  any 
thing.  It  reminded  me  of  cowboy  honor,  which 
prompts  a  rider  never  to  "touch  leather,"  no  mat^ev 
how  his  bronco  may  be  bucking.  And  omelette,  I  was 
later  reminded,  comes  from  the  French  alumelle,  which 
means  ship's  plating,  a  bit  of  etymology  well  authen 
ticated  by  Struthers'  skillet. 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-third 

SUMMER  is  here,  here  in  earnest,  and  already  we've 
had  a  few  scorching  days.  Haying  will  soon  be  upon 
us,  and  there  is  no  slackening  in  the  wheels  of  indus 
try  about  Alabama  Ranch.  My  Little  Alarm-Clocks 
have  me  up  bright  and  early,  and  the  morning  prairie 
is  a  joy  that  never  grows  old  to  the  eye.  Life  is  good, 
and  I  intend  to  be  happy,  for 

I'm   going   alone, 

Though  Hell  forefend, 

By  a  way  of  my  own 
To  the  bitter  end! 

And  our  miseries,  after  all,  are  mostly  in  our  own 
minds.  Yesterday  I  came  across  little  Dinkie  lament 
ing  audibly  over  a  scratch  on  his  hand  at  least  seven 
days  old.  He  insisted  that  I  should  kiss  it,  and,  after 
witnessing  that  healing  touch,  was  perfectly  satisfied. 
And  there's  no  reason  why  grown-ups  should  be  more 
childish  than  children  themselves. 

One  thing  that  I've  been  missing  this  year,  more 
than  ever  before,  is  fresh  fruit.  During  the  last  few 
days  I've  nursed  a  craving  for  a  tart  Northern-Spy 
apple,  or  a  Golden  Pippin  with  a  water-core,  or  a 
juicy  and  buttery  Bartlett  pear  fresh  from  the  tree. 

201 


202  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHEK 

t 
Those  longings  come  over  me  occasionally,  like  mj 

periodic  hunger  for  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Atlantic, 
a  vague  ache  for  just  one  vision  of  tumbling  beryl 
water,  for  the  plunge  of  cool  green  waves  and  the 
race  of  foam.  And  Peter  overheard  me  lamenting  our 
lack  of  fruit  and  proclaiming  I  could  eat  my  way 
right  across  the  Niagara  Peninsula  in  peach  time. 
So  when  he  came  back  from  Buckhorn  this  afternoon 
with  the  farm  supplies,  he  brought  on  his  own  hook 
two  small  boxes  of  California  plums  and  a  whole  crate 
of  oranges. 

It  was  very  kind  of  him,  and  also  very  foolish,  for 
the  oranges  will  never  keep  in  this  hot  weather,  and 
the  only  way  that  I  can  see  to  save  them  is  to  make 
them  up  into  marmalade.  It  was  pathetic  to  see  little 
Dinkie  with  his  first  orange.  It  was  hard  to  persuade 
him  that  it  wasn't  a  new  kind  of  ball.  But  once 
the  flavor  of  its  interior  juices  was  made  known  to 
him,  he  took  to  it  like  a  cat  to  cream. 

It  brought  home  to  me  how  many  things  there  are 
my  kiddies  have  had  to  do  without,  how  much  that 
is  a  commonplace  to  the  city  child  must  remain  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  prairie  tot.  But  I'm  not  complain 
ing.  I  am  resolved  to  be  happy,  and  in  my  prophetic 
bones  is  a  feeling  that  things  are  about  to  take  a  turn 
for  the  better,  something  better  than  the  humble 
stewed  prune  for  Dinkie's  little  tummy  and  something 
better  than  the  companionship  of  the  hired  help  for 


THE  PRAIRIE  TVIOTHER  203 

MS  mother.  Not  that  both  Peter  and  Whinnie  haven't 
a  warm  place  in  my  heart!  They  couldn't  be  better 
to  me.  But  I'm  one  of  those  neck-or-nothing  women, 
I  suppose,  who  are  silly  enough  to  bank  all  on  a 
single  throw,  who  have  to  put  all  their  eggs  of  affec 
tion  in  one  basket.  I  can't  be  indiscriminate,  like  Din- 
kie,  for  instance,  whom  I  found  the  other  day  kissing 
every  picture  of  a  man  in  the  Mail-Order  Catalogue 
and  murmuring  "Da-da !"  and  doing  the  same  to  every 
woman-picture  and  saying  "Mummy."  To  be  lavish 
with  love  is,  I  suppose,  the  prerogative  of  youth.  Age 
teaches  us  to  treasure  it  and  sustain  it,  to  guard  it 
as  we'd  guard  a  lonely  flame  against  the  winds  of 
the  world.  But  the  flame  goes  out,  and  we  grope  on 
through  the  darkness  wondering  why  there  can  never 
be  another.  .  .  ;  f 

I  wonder  if  Lady  Alicia  is  as  cold  as  she  seems? 
For  she  has  the  appearance  of  keeping  her  emotions 
in  an  ice-box  of  indifferency,  the  same  as  city  florists 
keep  their  flowers  chilled  for  commercial  purposes. 
Lady  Allie,  I'm  sure,  is  fond  of  my  little  Dinkie.  Yet 
there's  a  note  of  condescension  in  her  affection,  for 
even  in  what  seems  like  an  impulse  of  adoration  her 
exclamation  nearly  always  is  "Oh,  you  lovable  little 
rabbit!"  or,  if  not  that,  it's  likely  to  be  "You  ador 
able  little  donkey  you !"  She  says  it  very  prettily,  of 
course,  setting  it  to  music  almost  with  that  melodious 
English  drawl  of  hers.  She  is,  she  must  be,  a  very 


204  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

fascinating  woman.     But  at  the  first  tee,  friendship 
ends,  as  the  golf -nuts  say. 

I  asked  Peter  the  other  day  what  he 
regarded  as  my  besetting  sin  and  the  brute  replied: 
"Topping  the  box."  I  told  him  I  didn't  quite  get  the 
idea.  "A  passion  to  produce  a  good  impression,"  he 
explained,  "by  putting  all  your  biggest  mental  straw 
berries  on  the  top !" 

"That  sounds  suspiciously  like  trying  to  be  a  Smart 
Aleck,"  I  retorted. 

"It  may  sound  that  way,  but  it  isn't.  You're  so 
mentally  alive,  I  mean,  that  you've  simply  got  to  be 
slightly  acrobatic.  And  it's  as  natural,  of  course,  as 
a  child's  dancing." 

But  Peter  is  wrong.  I've  been  out  of  the  world 
so  long  that  I've  a  dread  of  impressing  people  as 
stupid,  as  being  a  clodhopper.  And  if  trying  hard 
not  to  be  thought  that  is  "topping  the  box,"  I  sup 
pose  I'm  guilty. 

"You  are  also  not  without  vanity,"  Peter  judi 
cially  continued.  "But  every  naturally  beautiful 
woman  has  a  right  to  that."  And  I  proved  Peter's 
contention  by  turning  shell-pink  even  under  my  sun 
burn  and  feeling  a  warm  little  runway  of  pleasure 
creep  up  through  my  carcass,  for  the  homeliest  old 
prairie-hen  that  ever  made  a  pinto  shy,  I  suppose, 
loves  to  be  told  that  she's  beautiful. 

Peter,  of  course,  is  a  conscienceless  liar,  but  I  can't 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  205 

help  liking  him,  and  he'll  always  nest  warm  in  the 
ashes  of  my  heart. 

There's  one  thing  I  must  do,  as  soon  as  I  have  the 
chance,  and  that  is  get  in  to  a  dentist  and  have  my 
teeth  attended  to.  And  now  that  I'm  so  much  thinner 
I  want  a  new  and  respectable  pair  of  corsets.  I've 
been  studying  my  face  in  the  glass,  and  I  can  see, 
now,  what  an  awful  Ananias  Peter  really  is.  Struthers, 
by  the  way,  observed  me  in  the  midst  of  that  inspec 
tion,  and,  if  I'm  not  greatly  mistaken,  indulged  in  a 
sniff.  To  her,  I  suppose,  I'm  one  of  those  vain 
creatures  who  fall  in  love  with  themselves  as  a  child 
and  perpetuate,  thereby,  a  life  romance ! 


Saturday  the  Twenty-sixth 

COMING  events  do  not  cast  their  shadows  before 
them.  I  was  busy  in  the  kitchen  this  morning,  making 
marmalade  out  of  what  was  left  of  Peter's  oranges 
and  contentedly  humming  Oh,  Dry  Those  Tears  when 
the  earthquake  that  shook  the  world  from  under  my 
feet  occurred. 

The  Twins  had  been  bathed  and  powdered  and  fed 
and  put  out  in  their  sleeping-box,  and  Dinkie  was 
having  his  morning  nap,  and  Struthers  was  busy  at 
the  sewing-machine,  finishing  up  the  little  summer 
shirts  for  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  which  I'd  begun  to 
make  out  of  their  daddy's  discarded  B.  V.  D.'s.  It 
was  a  glorious  morning  with  a  high-arching  pale 
blue  sky  and  little  baby-lamb  cloudlets  along  the  sky 
line  and  the  milk  of  life  running  warm  and  rich  in 
the  bosom  of  the  sleeping  earth.  And  I  was  bustling 
about  in  my  apron  of  butcher's  linen,  after  slicing 
oranges  on  my  little  maple-wood  carving-slab  until 
the  house  was  aromatic  with  them,  when  the  sound 
of  a  racing  car-engine  smote  on  my  ear.  I  went  to 
the  door  with  fire  in  my  eye  and  the  long-handled  pre 
serving  spoon  in  my  hand,  ready  to  call  down  destruc 
tion  on  the  pinhead  who'd  dare  to  wake  my  kiddies. 

206 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  207 

My  visitor,  I  saw,  was  Lady  Alicia;  and  I  beheld 
my  broken  wash-tub  under  the  front  axle  of  her 
motor-car. 

I  went  out  to  her,  with  indignation  still  in  my  eye, 
but  she  paid  no  attention  to  either  that  or  the  tub 
itself.  She  was  quite  pale,  in  fact,  as  she  stepped 
down  from  her  driving-seat,  glanced  at  her  buck 
skin  gauntlets,  and  then  looked  up  at  me. 

"There's  something  we  may  as  well  face,  and  face 
at  once,"  she  said,  with  less  of  a  drawl  than  usual. 

I  waited,  without  speaking,  wondering  if  she  was 
referring  to  the  tub.  But  I  could  feel  my  heart  con 
tract,  like  a  leg-muscle  with  a  cramp  in  it.  And  we 
stood  there,  face  to  face,  under  the  flat  prairie  sun 
light,  ridiculously  like  two  cockerels  silently  estimat 
ing  each  other's  intentions. 

"I'm  in  love  with  your  husband,"  Lady  Alicia  sud 
denly  announced,  with  a  bell-like  note  of  challenge  in 
her  voice.  "And  I'd  rather  like  to  know  what  you're 
going  to  do  about  it." 

I  was  able  to  laugh  a  little,  though  the  sound  of 
it  seemed  foolish  in  my  own  startled  ears. 

"That's  rather  a  coincidence,  isn't  it?"  I  blithely 
admitted.  "For  so  am  I." 

I  could  see  the  Scotch-granite  look  that  came  into 
the  thick-lashed  tourmaline  eyes.  And  they'd  be 
lovely  eyes,  I  had  to  admit,  if  they  were  only  a  little 
softer. 


'208  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"That's  unfortunate,"  was  her  ladyship's  curt 
retort. 

"It's  more  than  unfortunate,"  I  agreed,  "it's  ex 
tremely  awkward." 

"Why?"  she  snapped,  plainly  annoyed  at  my  light 
ness  of  tone. 

"Because  he  can't  possibly  have  both  of  us,  you 
know — unless  he's  willing  to  migrate  over  to  that 
Mormon  colony  at  Red-Deer.  And  even  there,  I 
understand,  they're  not  doing  it  now." 

"I'm  afraid  this  is  something  much  too  serious  to 
joke  about,"  Lady  Alicia  informed  me. 

"But  it  strikes  me  as  essentially  humorous,"  I 
told  her. 

"I'm  afraid,"  she  countered,  "that  it's  apt  to  prove 
essentially  tragic." 

"But  he  happens  to  be  my  husband,"  I  observed. 

"Only  in  form,  I  fancy,  if  he  cares  for  some  one 
else,"  was  her  ladyship's  deliberate  reply. 

"Then  he  has  acknowledged  that — that  you've  cap 
tured  him?"  I  inquired,  slowly  but  surely  awakening 
to  the  sheer  audacity  of  the  lady  in  the  buckskin 
gauntlets. 

"Isn't  that  rather — er — primitive?"  inquired  Lady 
Allie,  paler  than  ever. 

"If  you  mean  coming  and  squabbling  over  another 
woman's  husband,  I'd  call  it  distinctly  prehistoric," 
I  said  with  a  dangerous  little  red  light  dancing  before 


209 


my  eyes.  "It's  so  original  that  it's  aboriginal.  But 
I'm  still  at  a  loss  to  know  just  what  your  motive  is, 
or  what  you  want." 

"I  want  an  end  to  this  intolerable  situation,"  my 
visitor  averred. 

"Intolerable  to  whom?"  I  inquired. 

"To  me,  to  Duncan,  and  to  you,  if  you  are  the 
right  sort  of  woman,"  was  Lady  Alicia's  retort.  And 
still  again  I  was  impressed  by  the  colossal  egoism  of 
the  woman  confronting  me,  the  woman  ready  to  ride 
rough-shod  over  the  world,  for  all  her  sparkling 
veneer  of  civilization,  as  long  as  she  might  reach  her 
own  selfish  ends. 

"Since  you  mention  Duncan,  I'd  like  to  ask  if 
you're  speaking  now  as  his  cousin,  or  as  his  mistress  ?" 

Lady  Alicia's  stare  locked  with  mine.  She  was 
making  a  sacrificial  effort,  I  could  see,  to  remain  calm. 

"I'm  speaking  as  some  one  who  is  slightly  inter 
ested  in  his  happiness,  and  his  future,"  was  her  coldly 
intoned  reply. 

"And  has  my  husband  acknowledged  that  his  hap 
piness  and  his  future  remain  in  your  hands  ?"  I  asked. 

"I  should  hate  to  see  him  waste  his  life  in  a  hole 
like  this,"  said  Lady  Alicia,  not  quite  answering  my 
question. 

"Have  you  brought  any  great  improvement  to  it  ?" 
I  parried.  Yet  even  as  I  spoke  I  stood  impressed  by 
the  thought  that  it  was,  after  all,  more  than  primitive. 


210  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

It  was  paleolithic,  two  prehistoric  she-things  in  com 
bat  for  their  cave-man. 

"That  is  not  what  I  came  here  to  discuss,"  she 
replied,  with  a  tug  at  one  of  her  gauntlets. 

"I  suppose  it  would  be  nearer  the  mark  to  say,  since 
you  began  by  being  so  plain-spoken,  that  you  came 
here  to  ask  me  to  give  you  my  husband,"  I  retorted 
as  quietly  as  I  could,  not  because  I  preferred  the  soft 
pedal,  but  because  I  nursed  a  strong  suspicion  that 
Struthers'  attentive  ear  was  just  below  the  nearest 
window-sill. 

Lady  Alicia  smiled  forbearingly,  almost  pityingly. 

"Any  such  donation,  I'm  afraid,  is  no  longer  your 
prerogative,"  she  languidly  remarked,  once  more  mis 
tress  of  herself.  "What  I'm  more  interested  in  is 
your  giving  your  husband  his  liberty." 

I  felt  like  saying  that  this  was  precisely  what  I 
had  been  giving  him.  But  it  left  too  wide  an  opening. 
So  I  ventured,  instead:  "I've  never  heard  my  husband 
express  a  desire  for  his  liberty." 

"He's  too  honorable  for  that,"  remarked  my  enemy. 

"Then  it's  an  odd  kind  of  honor,"  I  icily  remarked, 
"that  allows  you  to  come  here  and  bicker  over  a  situa 
tion  that  is  so  distinctly  personal." 

"Pardon  me,  but  I'm  not  bickering.  And  I'm  not 
rising  to  any  heights  of  courage  which  would  be 
impossible  to  your  husband.  It's  consoling,  however, 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


to  know  how  matters  stand.  And  Duncan  will  proba 
bly  act  according  to  his  own  inclinations." 

That  declaration  would  have  been  more  inflam 
matory,  I  think,  if  one  small  truth  hadn't  gradually 
come  home  to  me.  In  some  way,  and  for  some  reason, 
Lady  Alicia  Elizabeth  Newland  was  not  so  sure  of 
herself  as  she  was  pretending  to  be.  She  was  not  so 
sure  of  her  position,  I  began  to  see,  or  she  would 
never  have  thrown  restraint  to  the  winds  and  come 
to  me  on  any  such  mission. 

"Then  that  counts  me  out  !"  I  remarked,  with  a  for 
lorn  attempt  at  being  facetious.  "If  he's  going  to  do 
as  he  likes,  I  don't  see  that  you  or  I  have  much  to  say 
in  the  matter.  But  before  he  does  finally  place  his 
happiness  in  your  hands,  I  rather  think  I'd  like  to 
have  a  talk  with  him." 

"That  remains  with  Duncan,  of  course,"  she  admit 
ted,  in  a  strictly  qualified  tone  of  triumph,  as  though 
she  were  secretly  worrying  over  a  conquest  too  incredi 
bly  facile. 

"He  knows,  of  course,  that  you  came  to  talk  this 
over  with  me?"  I  suggested,  as  though  it  were  an 
after-thought. 

"He  had  nothing  to  do  with  my  coming,"  asserted 
Lady  Alicia. 

"Then  it  was  your  own  idea?"  I  asked. 

"Entirely,"  she  admitted. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


"Then  what  did  you  hope  to  gain?"  I  demanded. 

"I  wasn't  considering  my  own  feelings,"  imperially 
acknowledged  her  ladyship. 

"That  was  very  noble  of  you,"  I  admitted,  "espe 
cially  when  you  bear  in  mind  that  you  weren't  con 
sidering  mine,  either!  And  what's  more,  Lady  New- 
land,  I  may  as  well  tell  you  right  here,  and  right  now, 
that  you  can't  get  anything  out  of  it.  I  gave  up  my 
home  to  you,  the  home  I'd  helped  make  by  the  work  of 
my  own  hands.  And  I  gave  up  the  hope  of  bringing 
up  my  children  as  they  ought  to  be  brought  up.  I 
even  gave  up  my  dignity  and  my  happiness,  in  the 
hope  that  things  could  be  made  to  come  out  straight. 
But  I'm  not  going  to  give  up  my  husband.  Remem 
ber  that,  I'm  not  going  to  give  him  up.  I  don't  care 
what  he  says  or  feels,  at  this  particular  moment  ;  I'm 
not  going  to  give  him  up  to  make  a  mess  of  what's 
left  of  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  may  not  know  what's 
ahead  of  him,  but  I  do!  And  now  that  you've  shown 
me  just  what  you  are,  and  just  what  you're  ready  to 
do,  I  intend  to  take  a  hand  in  this.  I  intend  to  fight 
you  to  the  last  ditch,  and  to  the  last  drop  of  the  hat  ! 
And  if  that  sounds  primitive,  as  you've  already  sug 
gested,  it'll  pay  you  to  remember  that  you're  out  here 
in  a  primitive  country  where  we're  apt  to  do  our  fight 
ing  in  a  mighty  primitive  way  !" 

It  was  a  very  grand  speech,  but  it  would  have  been 
more  impressive,  I  think,  if  I  hadn't  been  suddenly 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  213 

startled  by  a  glimpse  of  Whinstane  Sandy's  rock- 
ribbed  face  peering  from  the  bunk-house  window  at 
almost  the  same  moment  that  I  distinctly  saw  the  tip 
of  Struthers'  sage-green  coiffure  above  the  nearest 
sill  of  the  shack.  And  it  would  have  been  a  grander 
speech  if  I'd  stood  quite  sure  as  to  precisely  what  it 
meant  and  what  I  intended  to  do.  Yet  it  seemed  suf 
ficiently  climactic  for  my  visitor,  who,  after  a  queenly 
and  combative  stare  into  what  must  have  looked  like 
an  ecstatically  excited  Fourth-of-July  face,  turned 
imperially  about  and  swung  open  the  door  of  her 
Motor-car.  Then  she  stepped  up  to  the  car-seat,  as 
slowly  and  deliberately  as  a  sovereign  stepping  up  to 
her  throne. 

"It  may  not  be  so  simple  as  it  seems,"  she  announced 
with  great  dignity,  as  she  proceeded  to  start  her  car. 
And  the  same  dignity  might  have  attended  her  entire 
departure,  but  in  the  excitement  she  apparently 
flooded  her  carbureter,  and  the  starter  refused  to  work, 
and  she  pushed  and  spun  and  re-throttled  and  pushed 
until  she  was  quite  red  in  the  face.  And  when  the 
car  finally  did  get  under  way,  the  running-gear  became 
slightly  involved  with  my  broken  wash-tub  and  it  was 
not  until  the  latter  was  completely  and  ruthlessly 
demolished  that  the  automobile  found  its  right-of-way 
undisputed  and  anything  like  dignity  returned  to  the 
situation. 

I   stood   there,   with   the   long-handled   preserving 


214  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

spoon  still  in  my  hand,  staring  after  Lady  Alicia  and 
the  dust  that  arose  from  her  car-wheels.  I  stood  there 
in  a  sort  of  trance,  with  all  the  valor  gone  out  of  my 
bones  and  that  foolish  declamation  of  mine  still  ring 
ing  in  my  ears. 

I  began  to  think  of  all  the  clever  things  I  might 
have  said  to  Lady  Alicia  Elizabeth  Newland.  But 
the  more  I  thought  it  over  the  more  desolated  I  became 
in  spirit,  so  that  by  the  time  I  meandered  back  to  the 
shack  I  had  a  face  as  long  as  a  fiddle.  And  there 
I  was  confronted  by  a  bristling  and  voluble  Struthers, 
who  acknowledged  that  she'd  heard  what  she'd  heard, 
and  could  no  longer  keep  her  lips  sealed,  whether  it 
was  her  place  to  speak  or  not,  and  that  her  ladyship 
was  not  all  that  she  ought  to  be,  not  by  any  manner 
of  means,  or  she  would  never  have  left  England  and 
hidden  herself  away  in  this  wilderness  of  a  colony. 

I  had  been  rather  preoccupied  with  my  own 
thoughts,  and  paying  scant  attention  to  the  clatter- 
ing-tongued  Struthers,  up  to  this  point.  But  the 
intimation  that  Lady  Allie  was  not  in  the  West  for 
the  sake  of  her  health  brought  me  up  short.  And 
Struthers,  when  I  challenged  that  statement,  promptly 
announced  that  the  lady  in  question  was  no  'more  in 
search  of  health  than  a  tom-cat's  in  search  of  water 
and  no  more  interested  in  ranching  than  an  ox  is  inter 
ested  in  astronomy,  seeing  as  she'd  'a'  been  co-respond 
ent  in  the  Allerby  and  Crewe-Buller  divorce  case  if 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  215 

she'd  stayed  where  the  law  could  have  laid  a  hand  on 
her,  and  standing  more  shamed  than  ever  when  Baron 
Crewe-Buller  shut  himself  up  in  his  shooting-lodge 
and  blew  his  brains  out  three  weeks  before  her  lady 
ship  had  sailed  for  America,  and  the  papers  that  full 
of  the  scandal  it  made  it  unpleasant  for  a  self-respect 
ing  lady's  maid  to  meet  her  friends  of  a  morning  in 
Finsbury  Park.  And  as  for  these  newer  goings-on, 
Struthers  had  seen  what  was  happening  right  under 
her  nose,  she  had,  long  before  she  had  the  chance  to 
say  so  openly  by  word  of  mouth,  but  now  that  the  fat 
was  in  the  fire  she  wasn't  the  kind  to  sit  by  and  see 
those  she  should  be  loyal  to  led  about  by  the  nose. 
And  so  forth.  And  so  forth!  For  just  what  else  the 
irate  Struthers  had  to  unload  from  her  turbulent 
breast  I  never  did  know,  since  at  that  opportune 
moment  Dinkie  awakened  and  proceeded  to  page  his 
parent  with  all  the  strength  of  his  impatient  young 
lungs. 

By  the  time  I'd  attended  to  Dinkie  and  finished  my 
sadly  neglected  marmalade — for  humans  must  eat, 
whatever  happens — I'd  made  an  effort  to  get  some 
sort  of  order  back  into  my  shattered  world.  Yet  it 
was  about  Duncan  more  than  any  one  else  that  my 
thoughts  kept  clustering  and  centering.  He  seemed, 
at  the  moment,  oddly  beyond  either  pity  or  blame. 
I  thought  of  him  as  a  victim  of  his  own  weakness, 
as  the  prey  of  a  predaceous  and  unscrupulous  woman 


216  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

who  had  intrigued  and  would  continue  to  intrigue 
against  his  happiness,  a  woman  away  from  her  own 
world,  a  self-complacent  and  sensual  privateer  who 
for  a  passing  whim,  for  a  momentary  appeasement  of 
her  exile,  stood  ready  to  sacrifice  the  last  of  his  self- 
respect.  She  was  self-complacent,  but  she  was  also 
a  woman  with  an  unmistakable  ph}rsical  appeal.  She 
was  undeniably  attractive,  as  far  as  appearances  went, 
and  added  to  that  attractiveness  was  a  dangerous  im 
mediacy  of  attack,  a  touch  of  outlawry,  which  only  too 
often  wins  before  resistance  can  be  organized.  And 
Dinky-Dunk,  I  kept  reminding  myself,  was  at  that 
dangerous  mid-channel  period  of  a  man's  life  where 
youth  and  age  commingle,  where  the  monotonous  mid 
dle-years  ..slip  their  shackles  over  his  shoulders  and 
remind  him  that  his  days  of  dalliance  are  ebbing  away. 
He  awakens  to  the  fact  that  romance  is  being  left 
behind,  that  the  amorous  adventure  which  once  meant 
so  much  to  him  must  soon  belong  to  the  past,  that 
he  must  settle  down  to  his  jog-trot  of  family  life. 
It's  the  age,  I  suppose,  when  any  spirited  man  is 
tempted  to  kick  up  with  a  good-by  convulsion  or  two 
of  romantic  adventure,  as  blind  as  it  is  brief  and  pas 
sionate,  sadly  like  the  contortions  of  a  rooster  with 
its  head  cut  off. 

I  tried,  as  I  sat  down  and  struggled  to  think  things 
out,  to  withhold  all  blame  and  bitterness.  Then  I 
tried  to  think  of  life  without  Dinky -Dunk.  I  attempted 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  217 

to  picture  my  daily  existence  with  somebody  else  in 
the  place  that  my  Diddums  had  once  filled.  But  I 
couldn't  do  it.  I  couldn't  forget  the  old  days.  I 
couldn't  forget  the  wide  path  of  life  that  we'd  traveled 
together,  and  that  he  was  the  father  of  my  children 
— my  children  who  will  always  need  him! — and  that 
he  and  he  alone  had  been  my  torch-bearer  into  the 
tangled  wilderness  of  passion. 

Then  I  tried  to  think  of  life  alone,  of  going  soli 
tary  through  the  rest  of  my  days — and  I  knew  that 
my  Maker  had  left  me  too  warm-blooded  and  too 
dependent  on  the  companionship  of  a  mate  ever  to 
turn  back  to  single  harness.  I  couldn't  live  without 
a  man.  He  might  be  a  sorry  mix-up  of  good  and  bad, 
but  I,  the  Eternal  Female,  would  crave  him  as  a  mate. 
Most  women,  I  knew,  were  averse  to  acknowledging 
such  things;  but  life  has  compelled  me  to  be  candid 
with  myself.  The  tragic  part  of  it  all  seems  that 
there  should  and  could  be  only  one  man.  I  had  been 
right  when  I  had  only  too  carelessly  called  myself  a 
neck-or-nothing  woman. 

It  wasn't  until  later  that  any  definite  thought  of 
injustice  to  me  at  Dinky -Dunk's  hands  entered  my 
head,  since  my  attitude  toward  Dinky-Dunk  seemed 
to  remain  oddly  maternal,  the  attitude  of  the  mother 
intent  on  extenuating  her  own.  I  even  wrung  a 
ghostly  sort  of  consolation  out  of  remembering  that 
it  was  not  a  young  and  dewy  girl  who  had  imposed 


218  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

herself  on  his  romantic  imagination,  for  youth  and 
innocence  and  chivalric  obligation  would  have  brought 
a  much  more  dangerous  fire  to  fight.  But  Lady  Alicia, 
with  all  her  carefully  achieved  charm,  could  scarcely 
lay  claim  to  either  youth  or  the  other  thing.  Early 
in  the  morning,  I  knew,  those  level  dissecting  eyes  of 
hers  would  look  hard,  and  before  her  hair  was  up  she'd 
look  a  little  faded,  and  there'd  be  moments  of  stress 
and  strain  when  her  naively  insolent  drawl  would  jar 
on  the  nerves,  like  the  talk  of  a  spoiled  child  too  intent 
on  holding  the  attention  of  a  visitor  averse  to  pre 
cocity.  And  her  disdain  of  the  practical  would  degen 
erate  into  untidiness,  and  her  clinging-ivyness,  if  it 
clung  too  much,  would  probably  remind  a  man  in  his 
reactionary  moments  of  ennui  that  there  are  subtler 
pursuits  than  being  a  wall,  even  though  it's  a  sus 
taining  wall. 

And  somewhere  in  her  make-up  was  a  strain  of 
cruelty  or  she  would  never  have  come  to  me  the  way 
she  did,  and  struck  at  me  with  an  open  claw.  That 
cruelty,  quite  naturally,  could  never  have  been  paraded 
before  my  poor  old  Dinky-Dunk's  eyes.  It  would  be, 
later  on,  after  disillusionment  and  boredom.  Then, 
and  then  only,  it  would  dare  to  show  its  ugly  head. 
So  instead  of  feeling  sorry  for  myself,  I  began  to 
feel  sorry  for  my  Diddums,  even  though  he  was  trying 
to  switch  me  off  like  an  electric-light.  And  all  of  a 
sudden  I  came  to  a  decision. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


I  decided  to  write  to  Dinky-Dunk.  That,  I  felt, 
would  be  safer  than  trying  to  see  him.  For  in  a  letter 
I  could  say  what  I  wanted  to  without  being  stopped 
or  side-tracked.  There  would  be  no  danger  of  accusa 
tions  and  recriminations,  of  anger  leading  to  extremes, 
of  injured  pride  standing  in  the  path  of  honesty.  It 
would  be  better  than  talking.  And  what  was  more, 
it  could  be  done  at  once,  for  the  mysterious  impression 
that  time  was  precious,  that  something  ominous  was  in 
the  air,  had  taken  hold  of  me. 

So  I  wrote  to  Dinky-Dunk.  I  did  it  on  two  crazy- 
looking  pages  torn  out  of  the  back  of  his  old  ranch 
ledger.  I  did  it  without  giving  much  thought  to 
precisely  what  I  said  or  exactly  how  I  phrased  it, 
depending  on  my  heart  more  than  my  brain  to  guide 
me  in  the  way  I  should  go.  For  I  knew,  in  the  marrow 
of  my  bones,  that  it  was  my  last  shot,  my  forlornest 
ultimatum,  since  in  it  went  packed  the  last  shred  of 
my  pride. 

"Dear  Dinky-Dunk,"  I  wrote,  "I  hardly  know  how 
to  begin,  but  I  surely  don't  need  to  begin  by  saying 
we  haven't  been  hitting  it  off  very  well  of  late.  We 
seem  to  have  made  rather  a  mess  of  things,  and  I  sup 
pose  it's  partly  my  fault,  and  the  fault  of  that  stupid 
pride  which  keeps  us  tongue-tied  when  we  should  be 
honest  and  open  with  each  other.  But  I've  been  feel 
ing  lately  that  we're  both  skirting  a  cut-bank  with 
our  eyes  blindfolded,  and  I've  faced  an  incident,  trivial 


220  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

in  itself  but  momentous  in  its  possibilities,  which  per 
suades  me  that  things  can't  go  on  as  they  are.  There's 
too  much  at  stake  to  let  either  ruffled  nerves  or  false 
modesty — or  whatever  you  want  to  call  it — come  be 
tween  you  and  the  very  unhappy  woman  who  still  is 
your  wife.  It's  time,  I  think,  when  we  both  ought  to 
look  everything  squarely  in  the  face,  for,  after  all, 
we've  only  one  life  to  live,  and  if  you're  happy,  at  this 
moment,  if  you're  completely  and  tranquilly  happy 
as  I  write  this,  then  I've  banked  wrong,  tragically 
wrong,  on  what  I  thought  you  were.  For  I  have 
banked  on  you,  Dinky-Dunk,  banked  about  all  my 
life  and  happiness — and  it's  too  late  to  change,  even 
if  I  wanted  to.  I'm  alone  in  the  world,  and  in  a  lonely 
part  of  the  world,  with  three  small  children  to  look 
after,  and  that  as  much  as  anything,  I  suppose,  drives 
me  to  plain  speaking  and  compels  me  to  clear  think 
ing.  But  even  as  I  write  these  words  to  you,  I  realize 
that  it  isn't  really  a  matter  of  thought  or  speech. 
It's  a  matter  of  feeling.  And  the  one  thing  I  feel 
is  that  I  need  you  and  want  you;  that  no  one,  that 
nothing,  can  ever  take  your  place.  ...  I  thought 
I  could  write  a  great  deal  more.  But  I  find  I  can't. 
I  seem  to  have  said  everything.  It  is  everything, 
really.  For  I  love  you,  Dinky-Dunk,  more  than 
everything  in  life.  Perhaps  I  haven't  shown  it 
very  much,  of  late,  but  it's  there,  trying  to  hide 
its  silly  old  ostrich-head  behind  a  pebble  of  hurt 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


pride.  So  let's  turn  the  page  and  start  over.  Let's 
start  with  a  clean  slate,  before  we  lose  the  chance. 
Come  back  to  me.  I'm  very  unhappy.  I  find  it  hard 
to  write.  It's  only  that  big  ache  in  my  heart  that 
allows  me  to  write  at  all.  And  I've  left  a  lot  of  things 
unsaid,  that  I  ought  to  have  said,  and  intended  to  say, 
but  this  will  have  to  be  enough.  If  there's  nothing 
that  speaks  up  to  you,  from  between  these  lines,  then 
there's  nothing  that  can  hold  together,  I'm  afraid, 
what's  left  of  your  life  anid  mine.  Think  this  over, 
Dinky-Dunk,  and  answer  the  way  your  heart  dictates. 
But  please  don't  keep  me  waiting  too  long,  for  until 
I  get  that  answer  I'll  be  like  a  hen  on  a  hot  griddle  or 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots  on  the  morning  before  she  lost 
her  head,  if  that's  more  dignified." 

The  hardest  part  of  all  that  letter,  I  found,  was  the 
ending  of  it.  It  took  me  a  long  time  to  decide  just 
what  to  sign  myself,  just  how  to  pilot  my  pen  between 
the  rocks  of  candor  and  dignity.  So  I  ended  up  by 
signing  it  "Chaddie"  and  nothing  more,  for  already 
the  fires  of  emotion  had  cooled  and  a  perplexed  little 
reaction  of  indiff  erency  had  set  in.  It  was  only  a  sur 
face-stir,  but  it  was  those  surface-stirs,  I  remembered, 
which  played  such  a  lamentably  important  part  in 
life. 

When  Whinstane  Sandy  came  in  at  noon  for  his 
dinner,  a  full  quarter  of  an  hour  ahead  of  Peter,  I 
had  his  meal  all  ready  for  him  by  the  time  he  had 


222  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

watered  and  fed  his  team.  I  cut  that  meal  short,  in 
fact,  by  handing  him  my  carefully  sealed  letter  and 
telling  him  I  wanted  him  to  take  it  straight  over  to 
Casa  Grande. 

I  knew  by  his  face  as  I  helped  him  hitch  Water- 
Light  to  the  buckboard — for  Whinnie's  foot  makes  it 
hard  for  him  to  ride  horseback — that  he  nursed  a 
pretty  respectable  inkling  of  the  situation.  He  offered 
no  comments,  and  he  even  seemed  averse  to  having  his 
eye  meet  mine,  but  he  obviously  knew  what  he  knew. 

He  was  off  with  a  rattle  of  wheels  and  a  drift  of 
trail-dust  even  before  Peter  and  his  cool  amending  eyes 
arrived  at  the  shack  to  "stoke  up"  as  he  expresses  it- 
I  tried  to  make  Peter  believe  that  nothing  was  wrong, 
and  cavorted  about  with  Bobs,  and  was  able  to  laugh 
when  Dinkie  got  some  of  the  new  marmalade  in  his 
hair,  and  explained  how  we'd  have  to  take  our  mower- 
knives  over  to  Teetzel's  to  have  them  ground,  and  did 
my  best  to  direct  silent  reproofs  at  the  tight-lipped 
and  tragic-eyed  Struthers,  who  moved  about  like  a 
head-mourner  not  unconscious  of  her  family  obliga 
tions.  But  Peter,  I  suspect,  sniffed  something  un 
toward  in  the  air,  for  after  a  long  study  of  my  face — 
which  made  me  color  a  little,  in  spite  of  myself — he 
became  about  as  abstracted  and  solemn-eyed  as  Struth 
ers  herself. 

To  my  dying  day  I  shall  never  forget  that  wait  for 
Whinnie  to  come  back.  It  threatened  to  become  an 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


endless  one.  I  felt  like  Bluebeard's  wife  up  in  the 
watch  tower  —  no,  it  was  her  Sister  Anne,  wasn't  it, 
who  anxiously  mounted  the  tower  to  search  for  the 
first  sign  of  deliverance?  At  any  rate  I  felt  like  Luck- 
now  before  the  Relief,  or  a  prisoner  waiting  for  the 
jury  to  file  in,  or  a  gambler  standing  over  an  invisi 
ble  roulette-table  and  his  last  throw,  wondering  into 
what  groove  the  little  ivory  ball  was  to  run.  And 
when  Whinnie  finally  appeared  his  seamed  old  face 
wore  such  a  look  of  dour  satisfaction  that  for  a  weak 
flutter  or  two  of  the  heart  I  thought  he'd  brought 
Dinky-Dunk  straight  back  with  him. 

But  that  hope  didn't  live  long. 

"Your  maun's  awa',"  said  Whinnie,  with  quite  un 
necessary  curtness,  as  he  held  my  own  letter  out  to  me. 

"He's  away?"  I  echoed  in  a  voice  that  was  just  a 
wee  bit  trembly,  as  I  took  the  note  from  Whinnie, 
"what  do  you  mean  by  away?" 

"He  left  three  hours  ago  for  Chicago,"  Whinstane 
Sandy  retorted,  still  with  that  grim  look  of  triumph 
in  his  gloomy  old  eyes. 

"But  what  could  be  taking  him  to  Chicago?"  I 
rather  weakly  inquired. 

"  'Twas  to  see  about  buyin'  some  blooded  stock  for 
the  ranch.  At  least,  so  her  ladyship  informed  me. 
But  that's  nae  more  than  one  of  her  lies,  I'm  thinkin'." 

"What  did  she  say,  Whinnie?"  I  demanded,  doing 
my  best  to  keep  cool. 


224 


"Naethin',"  was  Whinnie's  grim  retort.  "  'Twas 
me  did  the  sayin' !" 

"What  did  you  say?"  I  asked,  disturbed  by  the 
none  too  gentle  look  on  his  face. 

"What  was  needed  to  be  said,"  that  old  sour-dough 
with  the  lack-luster  eyes  quietly  informed  me. 

"What  did  you  say?"  I  repeated,  with  a  quavery 
feeling  just  under  my  floating  ribs,  alarmed  at  the 
after-light  of  audacity  that  still  rested  on  his  face, 
like  wine-glow  on  a  rocky  mountain-tip. 

"I  said,"  Whinstane  Sandy  informed  me  with  his  old 
shoulders  thrust  back  and  his  stubby  forefinger 
pointed  to  within  a  few  inches  of  my  nose,  "I  said 
that  I  kenned  her  and  her  kind  well,  havin'  watched 
the  likes  o'  her  ridden  out  o'  Dawson  City  on  a  rail 
more  times  than  once.  I  said  that  she  was  naethin' 
but  a  wanton" — only  this  was  not  the  word  Whinnie 
used — "a  wanton  o'  Babylon  and  a  temptress  o'  men 
and  a  corrupter  o'  homes  out  o'  her  time  and  place, 
bein'  naught  but  a  soft  shinin'  thing  that  was  a  mock 
ery  to  the  guid  God  who  made  her  and  a  blight  to  the 
face  o'  the  open  prairie  that  she  was  foulin'  with  her 
presence.  I  said  that  she'd  brought  shame  and  sor 
row  to  a  home  that  had  been  filled  with  happiness  until 
she  crept  into  it  like  the  serpent  o'  hell  she  was,  and 
seein'  she'd  come  into  a  lonely  land  where  the  people 
have  the  trick  o'  tryin'  their  own  cases  after  their  own 
way  and  takin'  when  need  be  justice  into  their  own 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


hands,  she'd  have  one  week,  one  week  o'  seven  days  and 
no  more,  to  gather  up  what  belonged  to  her  and  take 
herself  back  to  the  cities  o'  shame  where  she'd  find 
more  o'  her  kind.  And  if  she  was  not  disposed  to 
hearken  a  friendly  and  timely  word  such  as  I  was 
givin'  her,  I  said,  she'd  see  herself  taken  out  o'  her 
home,  and  her  hoorish  body  stripped  to  the  skin,  and 
then  tarred  and  feathered,  and  ridden  on  the  cap-rail 
of  a  corral-gate  out  of  a  settlement  that  had  small 
taste  for  her  company  !" 

"Whinnie!"  I  gasped,  sitting  down  out  of  sheer 
weakness,  "you  didn't  say  that?" 

"I  said  it,"  was  Whinnie's  laconic  retort. 

"But  what  right  had  you  to  —  " 

He  cut  me  short  with  a  grunt  that  was  almost  dis 
respectful. 

"I  not  only  said  it,"  he  triumphantly  affirmed,  "but 
what's  more  to  my  likin',  I  made  her  believe  it,  leavin' 
her  with  the  mockin'  laugh  dead  in  her  eyes  and  her 
face  as  white  as  yon  table-cover,  white  to  the  lips  !" 


Sunday  the  Twenty -seventh 

I'VE  been  just  a  little  mystified,  to-day,  by  Whin 
stane  Sandy's  movements.  As  soon  as  breakfast  was 
orer  and  his  chores  were  done  he  was  off  on  the  trail. 
I  kept  my  eye  on  him  as  he  went,  to  satisfy  myself 
that  he  was  not  heading  for  Casa  Grande,  where  no 
good  could  possibly  come  of  his  visitations. 

For  I've  been  most  emphatic  to  Whinstane  Sandy 
in  the  matter  of  his  delightful  little  lynch-law  pro 
gram.  There  shall  be  no  tarring  and  feathering  of 
women  by  any  man  in  my  employ.  That  may  have 
been  possible  in  the  Klondike  in  the  days  of  the  gold- 
rush,  but  it's  not  possible  in  this  country  and  this  day 
of  grace — except  in  the  movies.  And  life  is  not  so 
simple  that  you  can  ride  its  problems  away  on  the 
cap-rail  from  a  corral.  It's  unfortunate  that  that  ab 
surd  old  sour-dough,  for  all  his  good  intentions,  ever 
got  in  touch  with  Lady  Alicia.  I  have,  in  fact, 
strictly  forbidden  him  to  repeat  his  visit  to  Casa 
Grande,  under  any  circumstances. 

But  a  number  of  things  combine  to  persuade  me  that 
he's  not  being  as  passive  as  he  pretends.  He's  even 
sufficiently  forgotten  his  earlier  hostility  toward  Peter 
to  engage  in  long  and  guarded  conversation  with  that 

226 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  227 

gentleman,  as  the  two  of  them  made  a  pretense  of 
bolting  the  new  anchor-timbers  to  the  heel  of  the  wind 
mill  tower.  So  at  supper  to-night  I  summoned  up 
sufficient  courage  to  ask  Peter  what  he  knew  about  the 
situation. 

He  replied  that  he  knew  more  than  he  wanted  to, 
and  more  than  he  relished.  That  reply  proving  emi 
nently  unsatisfactory,  I  further  inquired  what  he 
thought  of  Lady  Alicia.  He  somewhat  startled  and 
shocked  me  by  retorting  that  according  to  his  own 
personal  way  of  thinking  she  ought  to  be  spanked 
until  she  glowed. 

I  was  disappointed  in  Peter  about  this.  I  had  al 
ways  thought  of  him  as  on  a  higher  plane  than  poor 
old  Whinnie.  But  he  was  equally  atavistic,  once 
prejudice  had  taken  possession  of  him,  for  what  he 
suggested  must  be  regarded  as  not  one  whit  more  re 
fined  than  tar  and  feathers.  As  for  myself,  I'd  like 
to  choke  her,  only  I  haven't  the  moral  courage  to  ad 
mit  it  to  anybody. 


Thursday  the  First 

LADY  ALICIA  has  announced,  I  learn  through  a 
Struthers  quite  pop-eyed  with  indignation,  that  it's 
Peter  and  I  who  possibly  ought  to  be  tarred  and 
feathered,  if  our  puritanical  community  is  deciding  to 
go  in  for  that  sort  of  thing !  It  is  to  laugh. 

Her  ladyship,  I  also  learn,  has  purchased  about  all 
the  small-arms  ammunition  in  Buckhorn  and  toted  the 
same  back  to  Casa  Grande  in  her  car.  There,  in  un 
obstructed  view  of  the  passers-by,  she  has  set  up  a 
target,  on  which,  by  the  hour  together,  she  coolly  and 
patiently  practises  sharpshooting  with  both  rifle  and 
revolver. 

I  admire  that  woman's  spunk.  And  whatever  you 
may  do,  you  can't  succeed  in  bullying  the  English. 
They  have  too  much  of  the  bull-dog  breed  in  their 
bones.  They're  always  at  their  best,  Peter  declares, 
when  they're  fighting.  "But  from  an  Englishwoman 
trying  to  be  kittenish,"  he  fervently  added,  "good 
Lord,  deliver  us  all !" 

And  that  started  us  talking  about  the  English. 
Peter,  of  course,  is  too  tolerant  to  despise  his  cousins 
across  the  Pond,  but  he  pregnantly  reminded  me  that 
Lady  Allie  had  asked  him  what  sort  of  town  Sas- 

228 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  229 

katchewan  was  and  he  had  retorted  by  inquiring  if  she 
was  fond  of  Yonkers,  whereupon  she'd  looked  puzzled 
and  acknowledged  that  she'd  never  eaten  one.  For 
Peter  and  Lady  Allie,  it  seems,  had  had  a  set-to  about 
American  map-names,  which  her  ladyship  had  de 
scribed  as  both  silly  and  unsayable,  especially  the 
Indian  ones,  while  Peter  had  grimly  proclaimed  that 
any  people  who  called  Seven-Oaks  Snooks  and  Bel- 
voir  Beever  and  Ruthven  Rivven  and  Wrottesley  Roxly 
and  Marylebone  Marrabun  and  Wrensfordsley 
Wrensley  had  no  right  to  kick  about  American  pro 
nunciations. 

But  Peter  is  stimulating,  even  though  he  does  stim 
ulate  you  into  opposition.  So  I  found  myself  defend 
ing  the  English,  and  especially  the  Englishman,  for 
too  many  of  them  had  made  me  happy  in  their  lovely 
old  homes  and  too  many  of  their  sons,  aeons  and  aeons 
ago,  had  tried  to  hold  my  hand. 

"Your  Englishman,"  I  proclaimed  to  Peter,  "al 
ways  acts  as  though  he  quite  disapproves  of  you  and 
yet  he'll  go  to  any  amount  of  trouble  to  do  things  to 
make  you  happy  or  comfortable.  Then  he  conceals 
his  graciousness  by  being  curt  about  it.  Then,  when 
he's  at  his  crankiest,  he's  apt  to  startle  you  by  saying 
the  divinest  things  point-blank  in  your  face,  and  as 
likely  as  not,  after  treating  you  as  he  would  a  rather 
backward  child  of  whom  he  rigidly  disapproves,  he'll 
make  love  to  you  and  do  it  with  a  fine  old  Anglo-Saxon 


230  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

directness.  He  hates  swank,  of  course,  for  he's  a 
truffle-hound  who  prefers  digging  out  his  own  deli 
cacies.  And  it's  ten  to  one,  if  a  woman  simply  sits 
tight  and  listens  close  and  says  nothing,  that  he'll  say 
something  about  her  unrivaled  powers  of  conversa 
tion  !" 


PETER,  as  we  sat  out  beside  the  corral  on  an  empty 
packing-case  to-night  after  supper,  said  that  civiliza 
tion  was  a  curse.  "Look  what  it's  doing  to  your  noble 
Red  Man  right  here  in  your  midst !  There  was  a  time, 
when  a  brave  died,  they  handsomely  killed  that  dead 
brave's  favorite  horse,  feeling  he  would  course  the 
plains  of  Heaven  in  peace.  Now,  I  find,  they  have 
their  doubts,  and  they  pick  out  a  dying  old  bone-yard 
whose  day  is  over,  or  an  outlaw  that  nobody  can  break 
and  ride.  And  form  without  faith  is  a  mockery.  It's 
the  same  with  us  whites.  Here  we  are,  us  two,  with — " 

But  I  stopped  Peter.  I  had  no  wish  to  slide  on 
rubber-ice  just  for  the  sake  of  seeing  it  bend. 

"Can  you  imagine  anything  lovelier,"  I  remarked 
as  a  derailer,  "than  the  prairie  at  this  time  of  the  year, 
and  this  time  of  day?" 

Peter  followed  my  eye  out  over  the  undulating  and 
uncounted  acres  of  sage-green  grain  with  an  eternity 
of  opal  light  behind  them. 

"Think  of  LaVerendrye,  who  was  their  Columbus," 
he  meditated  aloud.  "Going  on  and  on,  day  by  day, 
week  by  week,  wondering  what  was  beyond  that  world 

231 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


of  plain  and  slough  and  coulee  and  everlasting  green  ! 
And  they  tell  me  there's  four  hundred  million  arable 
acres  of  it.  I  wonder  if  old  Verendrye  ever  had  an 
inkling  of  what  Whittier  felt  later  on: 

'I  hear  the  tread  of  pioneers, 

Of  cities  yet  to  be  — 
The  first  low  wash  of  waves  where  soon 

Shall  roll  a  human  sea.'  : 

Then  Peter  went  on  to  say  that  Bryant  had  given 
him  an  entirely  false  idea  of  the  prairie,  since  from  the 
Bryant  poem  he'd  expected  to  see  grass  up  to  his  arm 
pits.  And  he'd  been  disappointed,  too,  by  the  scarcity 
of  birds  and  flowers. 

But  I  couldn't  let  that  complaint  go  by  unchal 
lenged.  I  told  him  of  our  range-lilies  and  foxglove 
and  buffalo-beans  and  yellow  crowfoot  and  wild  sun 
flowers  and  prairie-roses  and  crocuses  and  even  violets 
in  some  sections.  "And  the  prairie-grasses,  Peter  — 
don't  forget  the  prairie-grasses,"  I  concluded,  per 
plexed  for  a  moment  by  the  rather  grim  smile  that 
crept  up  into  his  rather  solemn  old  Peter-Panish  face. 

"I'm  not  likely  to,"  he  remarked. 

For  to-morrow,  I  remembered,  Peter  is  going  off  to 
cut  hay.  He  has  been  speaking  of  it  as  going  into  the 
wilderness  for  meditation.  But  what  he's  really  doing 
is  taking  a  team  and  his  tent  and  supplies  and  staying 
with  that  hay  until  it's  cut,  cut  and  "collected,"  to  use 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


the  word  which  the  naive  Lady  Allie  introduced  into 
these  parts. 

I  have  a  suspicion  that  it  is  the  wagging  of  tongues 
that's  sending  Peter  out  into  his  wilderness.  But  I've 
been  busy  getting  his  grub-box  ready  and  I  can  at 
least  see  that  he  fares  well.  For  whatever  happens, 
we  must  have  hay.  And  before  long,  since  we're  to  go 
in  more  and  more  for  live  stock,  we  must  have  a  silo 
at  Alabama  Ranch.  Now  that  the  open  range  is  a 
thing  of  the  past,  in  this  part  of  the  country  at  least, 
the  silo  is  the  natural  solution  of  the  cattle-feed  prob 
lem.  It  means  we  can  double  our  stock,  which  is  rather 
like  getting  another  farm  for  nothing,  especially  as 
the  peas  and  oats  we  can  grow  for  ensilage  purposes 
give  such  enormous  yields  on  this  soil  of  ours. 


Tuesday  the  Sixth 

FOR  the  second  time  the  unexpected  has  happened. 
Lady  Alicia  has  gone.  She's  off,  bag  and  baggage,, 
and  has  left  the  redoubtable  Sing  Lo  in  charge  of 
Casa  Grande. 

Her  ladyship  waited  until  one  full  day  after  the 
time-limit  imposed  upon  her  by  Whinstane  Sandy  in 
that  barbarous  armistice  of  his,  and  then,  having  saved 
her  face,  joined  the  Broadhursts  of  Montreal  on  a 
trip  to  Banff,  where  she'll  be  more  in  touch  with  her 
kind  and  her  countrymen.  From  there,  I  understand, 
she  intends  visiting  the  Marquis  of  Anglesey  ranch  at 
Wallachie. 

I  don't  know  what  she  intends  doing  about  her 
property,  but  it  seems  to  me  it  doesn't  show  any  great 
interest  in  either  her  crop  or  her  cousin,  to  decamp 
at  this  particular  time.  Struthers  protests  that  she's- 
a  born  gambler,  and  can't  live  without  bridge  and 
American  poker.  Banff,  accordingly,  ought  to  give 
her  what  she's  pining  for. 

But  I'm  too  busy  to  worry  about  Lady  Allie.  The 
Big  Drama  of  the  year  is  opening  on  this  sun-steeped 
plain  of  plenty,  for  harvest-time  will  soon  be  here  and 

234 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  235 

we've  got  to  be  ready  for  it.  We're  on  the  go  from 
six  in  the  morning  until  sun-down.  We're  bringing 
in  Peter's  crop  of  hay  with  the  tractor,  hauling  three 
wagon-loads  at  a  time.  I  make  the  double  trip,  get 
ting  back  just  in  time  to  feed  my  babies  and  then 
hiking  out  again.  That  means  we're  all  hitting  on 
every  cylinder.  I've  no  time  for  either  worries  or 
wishes,  though  Peter  once  remarked  that  life  is  only 
as  deep  as  its  desires,  and  that  the  measure  of  our 
existence  lies  in  the  extent  of  its  wants.  That  may  be 
true,  in  a  way,  but  I  haven't  time  to  philosophize  over 
it.  Hard  work  can  be  more  than  a  narcotic.  It's 
almost  an  anesthetic.  And  soil,  I've  been  thinking, 
should  be  the  symbol  of  life  here,  as  it  is  with  the 
peasants  of  Poland.  I  feel  that  I'm  getting  thinner, 
but  I've  an  appetite  that  I'm  ashamed  of,  in  secret. 

Dinky-Dunk,  by  the  way,  is  not  back  yet,  and 
there's  been  no  word  from  him.  Struthers  is  resolute 
in  her  belief  that  he's  in  hiding  somewhere  about  the 
mountain-slopes  of  Banff.  But  I  am  just  as  resolute 
in  my  scorn  for  all  such  suspicions.  And  yet,  and  yet, 
— if  I  wasn't  so  busy  I'd  be  tempted  to  hold  solemn 
days  of  feasting  and  supplication  that  Lady  Alicia 
Elizabeth  Newland  might  wade  out  beyond  her  depth 
in  the  pellucid  waters  of  Lake  Louise. 


Friday  the  Sixteenth 

PETER  surprised  me  yesterday  by  going  in  to  Buck- 
horn  and  bringing  out  a  machinist  to  work  on  the 
windmill  tower.  By  mid-afternoon  they  had  it  ready 
for  hoisting  and  rebolting  to  its  new  anchor-posts. 
So  just  before  supper  the  team  and  the  block-and- 
tackle  were  hitched  on  to  that  attenuated  steel  skeleton, 
Whinnie  took  one  guide  rope  and  I  took  the  other, 
and  our  little  Eiffel  Tower  slowly  lifted  itself  up  into 
the  sky. 

Peter,  when  it  was  all  over,  and  the  last  nut  tight 
ened  up,  walked  about  with  the  triumphant  smile  of 
a  Master-Builder  who  beholds  his  work  completed. 
So  I  said  "Hello,  Halvard  Solness!"  as  I  stepped  over 
to  where  he  stood. 

And  he  was  bright  enough  to  catch  it  on  the  wing, 
for  he  quoted  back  to  me,  still  staring  up  at  the  tower- 
head  :  "From  this  day  forward  I  will  be  a  free  builder." 

Whereupon  I  carelessly  retorted,  "Oh,  there's  some 
parts  of  Ibsen  that  I  despise." 

But  something  in  Peter's  tone  and  his  preoccupa 
tion  during  supper  both  worried  and  perplexed  me. 
So  as  soon  as  I  could  get  away  from  the  shack  I  went 

236 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  237 

out  to  the  windmill  tower  again.  And  the  small  plat 
form  at  the  end  of  the  sloping  little  iron  ladder  looked 
so  tempting  and  high  above  the  world  that  I  started 
up  the  galvanized  rungs. 

When  I  was  half-way  up  I  stopped  and  looked 
down.  It  made  me  dizzy,  for  prairie  life  gives  you 
few  chances  of  getting  above  the  flat  floor  of  your 
flat  old  world.  But  I  was  determined  to  conquer  that 
feeling,  and  by  keeping  my  eyes  turned  up  toward  the 
windmill  head  I  was  able  to  reach  the  little  platform 
at  the  top  and  sit  there  with  my  feet  hanging  over 
and  my  right  arm  linked  through  one  of  the  steel 
standards. 

I  suppose,  as  windmills  go,  it  wasn't  so  miraculously 
high,  but  it  was  amazing  how  e^en  that  moderate  alti 
tude  where  I  found  myself  could  alter  one's  view-point. 
I  felt  like  a  sailor  in  a  crow's-nest,  like  a  sentinel  on 
a  watch-tower,  like  an  eagle  poised  giddily  above  the 
world.  And  such  a  wonderful  and  wide-flung  world  it 
was,  spreading  out  beneath  me  in  mottled  patches  of 
grape-leaf  green  and  yellow  and  gold,  with  a  burgun- 
dian  riot  of  color  along  the  western  sky-line  where  the 
last  orange  rind  of  the  sun  had  just  slipped  down  out 
of  sight. 

As  I  stared  down  at  the  roof  of  our  shack  it  looked 
small  and  pitiful,  tragically  meager  to  house  the  tan 
gled  human  destinies  it  was  housing.  And  the  fields 
where  we'd  labored  and  sweated  took  on  a  foreign  and 


238  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

ghostly  coloring,  as  though  they  were  oblongs  on  the 
face  of  an  alien  world,  a  world  with  mystery  and 
beauty  and  unfathomable  pathos  about  it. 

I  was  sitting  there,  with  my  heels  swinging  out  in 
space  and  an  oddly  consoling  sense  of  calmness  in  my 
heart,  when  Peter  came  out  of  the  shack  and  started 
to  cross  toward  the  corral.  I  couldn't  resist  the  temp 
tation  to  toss  my  old  straw  hat  down  at  him. 

He  stopped  short  as  it  fell  within  twenty  paces  of 
him,  like  a  meteor  out  of  the  sky.  Then  he  turned  and 
stared  up  at  me.  The  next  minute  I  saw  him  knock 
out  his  little  briar  pipe,  put  it  away  in  his  pocket,  and 
cross  over  to  the  tower. 

I  could  feel  the  small  vibrations  of  the  steel  struc 
ture  on  which  I  sat  poised,  as  he  mounted  the  ladder 
toward  me.  And  it  felt  for  all  the  world  like  sitting  on 
the  brink  of  Heaven,  like  a  blessed  damozel  the  second, 
watching  a  sister-soul  coming  up  to  join  you  in  your 
beatitude. 

"I  say,  isn't  this  taking  a  chance?"  asked  Peter, 
a  little  worried  and  a  little  out  of  breath,  as  he  clam 
bered  up  beside  me. 

"It's  glorious !"  I  retorted,  with  a  nod  toward  the 
slowly  paling  sky-line. 

That  far  and  lonely  horizon  looked  as  though  a  fire 
of  molten  gold  burned  behind  the  thinnest  of  mauve 
and  saffron  and  purple  curtains,  a  fire  that  was  too 
subdued  to  be  actual  flame,  but  more  an  unearthly 


239 


and  ethereal  radiance,  luring  the  vision  on  and  on 
until  it  brought  an  odd  little  sense  of  desolation  to 
the  heart  and  made  me  glad  to  remember  that  Peter 
was  swinging  his  lanky  legs  there  at  my  side  out  over 
empty  space. 

"I  find,"  he  observed,  "that  this  tower  was  sold  to 
a  tenderfoot,  by  the  foot.  That's  why  it  went  over. 
It  was  too  highf alutin !  It  was  thirty  feet  taller  than 
it  had  any  need  to  be." 

Then  he  dropped  back  into  silence. 

I  finally  became  conscious  of  the  fact  that  Peter, 
instead  of  staring  at  the  sunset,  was  staring  at  me. 
And  I  remembered  that  my  hair  was  half  down,  trail 
ing  across  my  nose,  and  that  three  distinctly  new 
freckles  had  shown  themselves  that  week  on  the  bridge 
of  that  same  nose. 

"O  God,  but  you're  lovely !"  he  said  in  a  half-smoth 
ered  and  shamefaced  sort  of  whisper. 

"Verboten!"  I  reminded  him.  "And  not  so  much 
the  cussing,  Peter,  as  the  useless  compliments." 

He  said  nothing  to  that,  but  once  more  sat  staring 
out  over  the  twilight  prairie  for  quite  a  long  time. 
When  he  spoke  again  it  was  in  a  quieter  and  much 
more  serious  tone. 

"I  suppose  I  may  as  well  tell  you,"  he  said  without 
looking  at  me,  "that  I've  come  into  a  pretty  clear 
understanding  of  the  situation  here  at  Alabama 
Ranch." 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


"It's  kind  of  a  mix-up,  isn't  it?"  I  suggested,  witH 
an  attempt  at  lightness. 

Peter  nodded  his  head. 

"I've  been  wondering  how  long  you're  going  to 
wait,"  he  observed,  apparently  as  much  to  himself  as 
to  me. 

"Wait  for  what?"  I  inquired. 

"For  what  you  call  your  mix-up  to  untangle,"  was 
his  answer. 

"There's  nothing  for  me  to  do  but  to  wait,"  I  re 
minded  him. 

He  shook  his  head  in  dissent. 

"You  can't  waste  your  life,  you  know,  doing  that," 
he  quietly  protested. 

"What  else  can  I  do?"  I  asked,  disturbed  a  little  by 
the  absence  of  color  from  his  face,  apparent  even  in 
that  uncertain  light. 

"Nothing's  suggested  itself,  I  suppose?"  he  ven 
tured,  after  a  silence. 

"Nothing  that  prompts  me  into  any  immediate  ac 
tion,"  I  told  him.  "You  see,  Peter,  I'm  rather  an 
chored  by  three  little  hostages  down  in  that  little  shack 
there  !" 

That  left  him  silent  for  another  long  and  brooding 
minute  or  two. 

"I  suppose  you've  wondered,"  he  finally  said,  "why 
I've  stuck  around  here  as  long  as  I  have?" 

I  nodded,  not  caring  to  trust  myself  to  words,  and 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


then,  realizing  I  was  doing  the  wrong  thing,  I  shook 
my  head. 

"It's  because,  from  the  morning  you  found  me  in 
that  mud-hole,  I've  just  wanted  to  be  near  you,  to 
hear  your  voice  when  you  spoke,  to  see  the  curve  of 
your  lips  and  the  light  come  and  go  in  your  eyes  when 
you  laugh,"  were  the  words  that  came  ever  so  slowly 
from  Peter.  "I've  wanted  that  so  much  that  I've  let 
about  everything  else  in  life  go  hang.  Yet  in  a 
way,  and  in  my  own  world,  I'm  a  man  of  some 
little  importance.  I've  been  cursed  with  enough 
money,  of  course,  to  move  about  as  I  wish,  and 
loaf  as  I  like.  But  that  sort  of  life  isn't  really 
living.  I'm  not  in  the  habit,  though,  of  wanting 
the  things  I  can't  have.  So  what  strikes  me  as 
the  tragic  part  of  it  all  is  that  I  couldn't  have  met  and 
known  you  when  you  were  as  free  as  I  am  now.  In  a 
way,  you  are  free,  or  you  ought  to  be.  You're  a 
woman,  I  think,  with  arrears  of  life  to  make  up. 
You've  struck  me,  from  the  very  first,  as  too  alive,  too 
sensitive,  too  responsive  to  things,  to  get  the  fullest 
measure  out  of  life  by  remaining  here  on  the  prairie, 
in  what  are,  after  all,  really  pioneer  conditions. 
You've  known  the  other  kind  of  life,  as  well  as  I  have, 
and  it  will  always  be  calling  to  you.  And  if  that  call 
means  anything  to  you,  and  the  —  the  change  we've 
spoken  of  is  on  its  way,  or  for  some  unexpected  rea 
son  has  to  come,  I'm  —  well,  I'm  going  to  take  the  bit 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


in  my  teeth  right  here  and  tell  you  that  I  love  you 
more  than  you  imagine  and  a  good  deal  more,  I  sup 
pose,  than  the  law  allows  !" 

He  pushed  my  hand  aside  when  I  held  it  up  to  stop 
him. 

"I  may  as  well  say  it,  for  this  is  as  good  a  time  and 
place  as  we'll  ever  have,  and  I  can't  go  around  with 
my  teeth  shut  on  the  truth  any  longer.  I  know  you've 
got  your  three  little  tots  down  there,  and  I  love  'em 
about  as  much  as  you  do.  And  it  would  seem  like 
giving  a  little  meaning  and  purpose  to  life  to  know 
that  I  had  the  chance  of  doing  what  I  could  to  make 
you  and  to  make  them  happy.  I've  —  " 

But  I  couldn't  let  him  go  on. 

"It's  no  use,  Peter,"  I  cried  with  a  little  choke  in 
my  voice  which  I  couldn't  control.  "It's  no  earthly 
use.  I've  known  you  liked  me,  and  it's  given  me  a 
warm  little  feeling  down  in  one  corner  of  my  heart. 
But  I  could  never  allow  it  to  be  more  than  a  corner. 
I  like  you,  Peter,  and  I  like  you  a  lot.  You're  won 
derful.  In  some  ways  you're  the  most  adorable  man 
I've  ever  known  in  all  my  life.  That's  a  dangerous 
thing  to  say,  but  it's  the  truth  and  I  may  as  well  say 
it.  It  even  hurts  a  little  to  remember  that  I've  traded 
on  your  chivalry,  though  that's  the  one  thing  in  life 
you  can  trade  on  without  reproof  or  demand  for  re 
payment.  But  as  I  told  you  before,  I'm  one  of  those 
neck-or-nothing  women,  one  of  those  single-track 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


women,  who  can't  have  their  tides  of  traffic  going  two 
ways  at  once.  And  if  I'm  in  a  mix-up,  or  a  maelstrom, 
or  whatever  you  want  to  call  it,  I'm  in  it.  That's 
where  I  belong.  It  would  never,  never  do  to  drag  an 
innocent  outsider  into  that  mixed-up  mess  of  life, 
simply  because  I  imagined  it  could  make  me  a  little 
more  comfortable  to  have  him  there." 

Peter  sat  thinking  over  what  I'd  said.  There  were 
no  heroics,  no  chest-pounding,  no  suggestion  of  ro 
mantically  blighted  lives  and  broken  hearts. 

"That  means,  of  course,  that  I'll  have  to  climb  out,'* 
Peter  finally  and  very  prosaically  remarked. 

"Why?"  I  asked. 

"Because  it's  so  apt  to  leave  one  of  us  sailing 
under  false  colors,"  was  his  somewhat  oblique  way  of 
explaining  the  situation.  "I  might  have  hung  on  until 
something  happened,  I  suppose,  if  I  hadn't  shown  my 
hand.  And  I  hadn't  quite  the  right  to  show  my  hand, 
when  you  take  everything  into  consideration.  But 
you  can't  always  do  what  you  intend  to.  And  life's 
a  little  bigger  than  deportment,  anyway,  so  what's 
the  use  of  fussing  over  it?  There's  just  one  thing, 
though,  I  want  to  say,  before  we  pull  down  the  shut 
ters  again.  I  want  you  to  feel  that  if  anything  does 
happen,  if  by  any  mischance  things  should  take  a 
turn  for  the  worse,  or  you're  worried  in  any  way  about 
the  outcome  of  all  this"  —  he  indulged  in  a  quiet  but 
comprehensive  hand-wave  which  embraced  the  entire 


244  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

ranch  that  lay  in  the  gray  light  at  our  feet — "I  want 
you  to  feel  that  I'd  be  mighty  happy  to  think  you'd 
turn  to  me  for — for  help." 

It  was  getting  just  a  little  too  serious  again,  I  felt, 
and  I  decided  in  a  bit  of  a  panic  to  pilot  things  back 
to  shallower  water. 

"But  you  have  helped,  Peter,"  I  protested.  "Look 
at  all  that  hay  you  cut,  and  the  windmill  here,  and  the 
orange  marmalade  that'll  make  me  think  of  you  every 
morning !" 

He  leaned  a  little  closer  and  regarded  me  with  a 
quiet  and  wistful  eye.  But  I  refused  to  look  at  him. 

"That's  nothing  to  what  I'd  like  to  do,  if  you  gave 
me  the  chance,"  he  observed,  settling  back  against 
the  tower-standard  again. 

"I  know,  Peter,"  I  told  him.  "And  it's  nice  of  you 
to  say  it.  But  the  nicest  thing  of  all  is  your  prodig 
ious  unselfishness,  the  unselfishness  that's  leaving  this 
talk  of  ours  kind  of — well,  kind  of  hallowed,  and  some 
thing  we'll  not  be  unhappy  in  remembering,  when  it 
could  have  so  easily  turned  into  something  selfishly 
mean  and  ugly  and  sordid.  That's  where  you're 
big.  And  that's  what  I'll  always  love  you  for!" 

"Let's  go  down,"  said  Peter,  all  of  a  sudden.  "It's 
getting  cold." 

I  sat  staring  down  at  the  world  to  which  we  had  to 
return.  It  seemed  a  long  way  off.  And  the  ladder 
that  led  down  to  it  seemed  a  cobwebby  and  uncertain 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  245 

path  for  a  lady  whose  heart  was  still  slipping  a  beat 
no,w  and  then.  Peter  apparently  read  the  perplexity 
on  my  face. 

"Don't  worry,"  he  said.  "I'll  go  down  one  rung 
ahead  of  you.  Even  if  you  did  slip,  then,  I'll  be  there 
to  hold  you  up.  Come  on." 

We  started  down,  with  honest  old  Peter's  long  arms 
clinging  to  the  ladder  on  either  side  of  me  and  my 
feet  following  his,  step  by  step,  as  we  went  like  a  new 
fangled  sort  of  quadruped  down  the  narrow  steel 
rungs. 

We  were  within  thirty  feet  of  the  ground  when  I 
made  ever  so  slight  a  misstep  and  brought  Peter  up 
short.  The  next  moment  he'd  caught  me  up  bodily  in 
his  right  arm,  and  to  steady  myself  I  let  my  arms  slip 
about  his  neck.  I  held  on  there,  tight,  even  after  I 
knew  what  I  was  doing,  and  let  my  cheek  rest  against 
the  bristly  side  of  his  head  as  we  went  slowly  down  to 
the  bottom  of  the  tower. 

It  wasn't  necessary,  my  holding  my  arms  about 
Peter's  neck.  It  wasn't  any  more  necessary  than  it 
was  for  him  to  pick  me  up  and  carry  me  the  rest  of 
the  way  down.  It  wasn't  true-to-the-line  fair  play, 
even,  when  you  come  to  think  of  it  in  cold  blood,  and  it 
wasn't  by  any  manner  of  means  just  what  sedately 
married  ladies  should  do. 

But,  if  the  terrible  truth  must  be  told,  It  was  nice. 
I  think  both  our  hearts  were  a  little  hungry  for  the 


246  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

love  which  didn't  happen  to  be  coming  our  way,  which 
the  law  of  man  and  his  Maker  alike  prohibited.  J3o 
we  saved  our  dignity  and  our  self-respect,  oddly 
enough,  by  resorting  to  the  shallowest  of  subterfuges. 
And  I  don't  care  much  if  it  wasn't  true-to-the-line 
ethics.  I  liked  the  feel  of  Peter's  arm  around  me, 
holding  me  that  way,  and  I  hope  he  liked  that  long 
and  semi-respectable  hug  I  gave  him,  and  that  now 
and  then,  later  on,  in  the  emptier  days  of  his  life,  he'll 
remember  it  pleasantly,  and  without  a  bit  of  bitter 
ness  in  his  heart. 

For  Alabama  Ranch,  of  course,  is  going  to  lose 
Peter  as  soon  as  he  can  get  away. 


Tuesday  the  Twenty-fourth 

PETER  is  no  longer  with  us.  He  went  yesterday, 
/Much  to  the  open  grief  of  an  adoring  and  heart-broken 
Struthers.  I  stood  in  the  doorway  as  he  drove  off,  pre 
tending  to  mop  my  eyes  with  my  hankie  and  then  mak 
ing  a  show  of  wringing  the  brine  out  of  it.  He 
laughed  at  this  bit  of  play-acting,  but  it  was  rather 
a  melancholy  laugh.  Struthers,  however,  was  quite 
snappy  for  the  rest  of  the  morning,  having  appar 
ently  construed  my  innocent  pantomime  as  a  burlesque 
of  her  tendency  to  sniffle  a  little. 

I  never  quite  knew  how  much  we'd  miss  Peter  until 
he  was  gone,  and  gone  for  good.  Even  Dinkie  was 
strangely  moody  and  downcast,  and  showed  his  de 
pression  by  a  waywardness  of  spirit  which  reached 
its  crowning  misdemeanor  by  poking  a  bean  into  his 
ear. 

This  seemed  a  trivial  enough  incident,  at  first.  But 
the  heat  and  moisture  of  that  little  pocket  of  flesh 
caused  the  bean  to  swell,  and  soon  had  Dinkie  crying 
with  pain.  So  I  renewed  my  efforts  to  get  that  bean 
out  of  the  child's  ear,  for  by  this  time  he  was  really 
suffering.  But  I  didn't  succeed.  There  was  no  way 

247 


248  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

of  getting  behind  it,  or  getting  a  hold  on  it.  And 
poor  Dinkie  bawled  bitterly,  ignorant  of  why  this 
pain  should  be  inflicted  on  him  and  outraged  that  his 
own  mother  should  add  to  it  by  probing  about  the  al 
ready  swollen  side  of  his  head. 

I  was,  in  fact,  getting  a  bit  panicky,  and  specu 
lating  on  how  long  it  would  take  to  get  Dinkie  in  to 
Buckhorn  and  a  doctor,  when  Struthers  remembered 
about  a  pair  of  toilet  tweezers  she'd  once  possessed 
herself  of,  for  pulling  out  an  over-punctual  gray-hair 
or  two.  Even  then  I  had  to  resort  to  heroic  measures, 
tying  the  screaming  child's  hands  tight  to  his  side  with 
a  bath-towel  and  having  the  tremulous  Struthers  hold 
his  poor  little  head  flat  against  the  kitchen  table. 

It  was  about  as  painful,  I  suppose,  as  extracting 
a  tooth,  but  I  finally  got  a  grip  on  that  swollen  legume 
«nd  pulled  it  from  its  inflamed  pocket  of  flesh.  I  felt 
i*s  relieved  and  triumphant  as  an  obstetrician  after  a 
hard  case,  and  meekly  handed  over  to  Dinkie  anything 
his  Royal  Highness  desired,  even  to  his  fifth  cookie 
and  the  entire  contents  of  my  sewing-basket,  which 
under  ordinary  circumstances  is  strictly  taboo.  But 
once  the  ear-passage  was  clear  the  pain  went  away, 
and  Dinkie,  at  the  end  of  a  couple  of  hours,  was  him 
self  again. 

But  Peter  has  left  a  hole  in  our  lives.  I  keep  feel 
ing  that  he's  merely  out  on  the  land  and  will  be  coming 
in  with  that  quiet  and  remote  smile  of  his  and  talk- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  249 

ing  like  mad  through  a  meal  that  I  always  had  an  in 
centive  for  making  a  little  more  tempting  than  the 
ordinary  grub-rustling  of  a  clodhopper. 

The  only  person  about  Alabama  Ranch  who  seems 
undisturbed  by  Peter's  departure  is  Whinstane  Sandy. 
He  reminds  me  of  a  decrepit  but  robustious  old  rooster 
repossessing  himself  of  a  chicken-run  after  the  de 
capitation  of  an  arrogant  and  envied  rival.  He  has 
with  a  dour  sort  of  blitheness  connected  up  the  wind 
mill  pump,  in  his  spare  time,  and  run  a  pipe  in 
through  the  kitchen  wall  and  rigged  up  a  sink,  out  of 
a  galvanized  pig-trough.  It  may  not  be  lovely  to  the 
eye,  but  it  will  save  many  a  step  about  this  shack  of 
ours.  And  the  steps  count,  now  that  the  season's  work 
is  breaking  over  us  like  a  Jersey  surf ! 


Thursday  the  Twenty-sixth 

I'VE  got  Struthers  in  jumpers,  and  she's  learning 
how  to  handle  a  team.  Whinnie  laughed  at  her  legs, 
and  said  they  made  him  think  a-muckle  o'  a  heron. 
But  men  are  scarce  in  this  section,  and  it  looks  as 
though  Alabama  Ranch  was  going  to  have  a  real 
wheat  crop.  Whinnie  boasts  that  we're  three  weeks 
ahead  of  Casa  Grande,  which,  they  tell  me,  is  taking 
on  a  neglected  look. 

I've  had  no  message  from  my  Dinky-Dunk,  and  no 
news  of  him.  All  day  long,  at  the  back  of  my  brain, 
a  nervous  little  mouse  of  anxiety  keeps  nibbling  and 
nibbling  away.  Last  night,  when  she  was  helping  me 
get  the  Twins  ready  for  bed,  Struthers  confided  to 
me  that  she  felt  sure  Lady  Alicia  and  my  husband 
had  been  playmates  together  in  England  at  one  time, 
for  she's  heard  them  talking  and  laughing  about 
things  that  had  happened  long  ago.  But  it's  not  the 
things  that  happened  long  ago  that  are  worrying  me. 
It's  the  things  that  may  be  happening  now. 

I  wonder  what  the  fair  Lady  Alicia  intends  doing 
about  getting  her  crop  off.  Sing  Lo  will  scarcely  be 
the  man  to  master  that  problem.  .  .  .The  Lord 
knows  I'm  busy  enough,  but  I  seem  to  be  eternally 

250 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  251 

waiting  for  something.  I  wonder  if  every  woman's 
life  has  a  larval  period  like  this  ?  I've  my  children  and 
Bobs.  Over  my  heart,  all  day  long,  should  flow  a 
deep  and  steady  current  of  love.  But  it's  not  the  kind 
I've  a  craving  for.  There's  something  missing.  I've 
been  wondering  if  Dinky-Dunk,  even  though  he  were 
here  at  my  side,  would  still  find  any  "kick"  in  my 
kisses.  I  can't  understand  why  he  never  revealed  to 
me  the  fact  that  he  and  Lady  Allie  were  playmates 
as  children.  In  that  case,  she  must  be  considerably 
older  than  she  looks.  But  old  or  young,  I  wish  she'd 
stayed  in  England  with  her  croquet  and  pat-tennis 
and  broom-stick-cricket,  instead  of  coming  out  here 
and  majestically  announcing  that  nothing  was  to  be 
expected  of  a  country  which  had  no  railway  porters! 


Wednesday  the  First 

THE  departed  Peter  has  sent  back  to  us  a  Victrola 
and  a  neatly  packed  box  of  records.  Surely  that  was 
kind  of  him.  I  suppose  he  felt  that  I  needed  some 
thing  more  than  a  banjo  to  keep  my  melodious  soul 
alive.  He  may  be  right,  for  sometimes  during  these 
long  and  hot  and  tiring  days  I  feel  as  though  my 
spirit  had  been  vitrified  and  macadamized.  But  I 
haven't  yet  had  time  to  unpack  the  music-box  and  get 
it  in  working-order,  though  I've  had  a  look  through 
the  records.  There  are  quite  a  number  of  my  old 
favorites.  I  notice  among  them  a  song  from  The 
Bohemian  Girl.  It  bears  the  title  of  Then  You'll 
Remember  Me.  Poor  old  Peter !  For  when  I  play  it, 
I  know  I'll  always  be  thinking  of  another  man. 


252 


Sunday  the  Fifth 

LIFE  is  a  club  from  which  Cupid  can  never  be  black 
balled.  I  notice  that  Struthers,  who  seems  intent  on 
the  capture  of  a  soul-mate,  has  taken  to  darning 
Whinstane  Sandy's  socks  for  him.  And  Whinnie, 
who  is  a  bit  of  a  cobbler  as  well  as  being  a  bit  of  rene 
gade  to  the  ranks  of  the  misogynists,  has  put  new 
heels  and  soles  on  the  number  sevens  which  Struthers 
wears  at  the  extremities  of  her  heron-like  limbs.  Thus 
romance,  beginning  at  the  metatarsus,  slowly  but 
surely  ascends  to  the  diastolic  region ! 


Wednesday  the  Eighth 

I'VE  just  had  a  nice  little  note  from  Peter,  written 
from  the  Aldine  Club  in  Philadelphia,  saying  he'd 
neglected  to  mention  something  which  had  been  on 
his  mind  f0r  some  time.  He  has  a  slightly  rundown 
place  in  the  suburbs  of  Pasadena,  he  went  on  to 
explain,  and  as  his  lazy  summer  would  mean  he'd<have 
to  remain  in  the  East  and  be  an  ink-coolie  all  winter, 
the  place  was  at  my  disposal  if  it  so  turned  out  that 
a  winter  in  California  seemed  desirable  for  me  and 
my  kiddies.  It  would,  in  fact,  be  a  God-send — so  he 
protested — to  have  somebody  dependable  lodged  in 
that  empty  house,  to  keep  the  cobwebs  out  of  the  cor 
ners  and  the  mildew  off  his  books  and  save  the  whole 
disintegrating  shebang  from  the  general  rack  and 
ruin  which  usually  overtakes  empty  mansions  of  that 
type.  He  gave  me  the  name  and  address  of  the  care 
taker,  on  Euclid  Avenue,  and  concluded  by  saying  it 
wasn't  very  much  of  a  place,  but  might  be  endured 
for  a  winter  for  the  sake  of  the  climate,  if  I  happened 
to  be  looking  for  a  sunnier  corner  of  the  world  than 
Alabama  Ranch.  He  further  announced  that  he'd 
give  an  arm  to  see  little  Dinkie's  face  when  that  young 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  255 

outlaw  stole  his  first  ripe  orange  from  the  big  Valencia 
tree  in  the  patio.  And  Peter,  in  a  post-script,  averred 
that  he  could  vouch  for  the  flavor  of  the  aforemen 
tioned  Valencias. 


Tuesday  the  Fourteenth 

WHINSTANE  SANDY  about  the  middle  of  last  week 
brought  home  the  startling  information  that  Sing  Lo 
had  sold  Lady  Allie's  heavy  work-team  to  Bud 
O'Malley  for  the  paltry  sum  of  sixty  dollars.  He 
further  reported  that  Sing  Lo  had  decamped,  taking 
with  him  as  rich  a  haul  as  he  could  carry. 

I  was  in  doubt  on  what  to  do,  for  a  while.  But  I 
eventually  decided  to  go  in  to  Buckhorn  and  send  a 
telegram  to  the  owner  of  Casa  Grande.  I  felt  sure, 
if  Lady  Allie  was  in  Banff,  that  she'd  be  at  the 
C.  P.  R.  hotel  there,  and  that  even  if  she  had  gone  on 
to  the  Anglesey  Ranch  my  telegram  would  be  for 
warded  to  Wallachie.  So  I  wired  her:  "Chinaman 
left  in  charge  has  been  selling  ranch  property.  Advise 
me  what  action  you  wish  taken." 

A  two-day  wait  brought  no  reply  to  this,  so  I  then 
telegraphed  to  the  hotel-manager  asking  for  informa 
tion  as  to  her  ladyship.  I  was  anxious  for  that 
information,  I'll  confess,  for  more  personal  reasons 
than  those  arising  out  of  the  activities  of  Sing  Lo. 

When  I  went  in  for  my  house  supplies  on  Friday 
there  was  a  message  there  from  the  Banff  hotel- 
manager  stating  that  Lady  Newland  had  left,  ten  days 

256 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  257 

before,  for  the  Empress  Hotel  in  Victoria.  So  I 
promptly  wired  that  hotel,  only  to  learn  that  my  titled 
wanderer  might  be  found  in  San  Francisco,  at  the 
Hotel  St.  Francis.  So  I  repeated  my  message;  and 
yesterday  morning  Hy  Teetzel,  homeward  bound  from 
Buckhorn  in  his  tin  Lizzie,  brought  the  long-expected 
reply  out  to  me.  It  read: 

"Would  advise  consulting  my  ranch  manager  on 
the  matter  mentioned  in  your  wire,"  and  was  signed 
"Alicia  Newland." 

There  was  a  sense  of  satisfaction  in  having  located 
the  lady,  but  there  was  a  distinctly  nettling  note  in 
the  tenor  of  that  little  message.  I  decided,  accord 
ingly,  to  give  her  the  retort  courteous  by  wiring  back 
to  her:  "Kindly  advise  me  of  ranch  manager's  pres 
ent  whereabouts,"  and  at  the  bottom  of  that  message 
inscribed,  "Mrs.  Duncan  Argyll  McKail." 

And  I've  been  smiling  a  little  at  the  telegram  which 
has  just  been  sent  on  to  me,  for  now  that  I  come  to 
review  our  electric  intercourse  in  a  cooler  frame  of 
mind  it  looks  suspiciously  like  back-biting  over  a  thou 
sand  miles  of  telegraph-wire.  This  second  message 
from  San  Francisco  said:  "Have  no  knowledge  what 
ever  of  the  gentleman's  movements  or  whereabouts." 

It  was,  I  found,  both  a  pleasant  and  a  puzzling  bit 
of  information,  and  my  earlier  regrets  at  wasting  time 
that  I  could  ill  spare  betrayed  a  tendency  to  evaporate. 
It  was  satisfying,  and  yet  it  was  not  satisfying,  for 


258  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

morose  little  doubts  as  to  the  veracity  of  the  lady  in 
question  kept  creeping  back  into  my  mind.  It  also 
left  everything  pretty  much  up  in  the  air,  so  I've 
decided  to  take  things  in  my  own  hand  and  go  to  Casa 
Grande  and  look  things  over. 


Thursdaii  the  Sixteenth 

I  DIDN'T  go  over  to  Casa  Grande,  after  all.  For 
this  morning  the  news  came  to  me  that  Duncan  had 
been  back  since  day  before  yesterday.  And  he  is 
undoubtedly  doing  anything  that  needs  to  be  done. 

But  the  lady  lied,  after  all.  That  fact  now  is  only 
too  apparent.  And  her  equerry  has  been  hurried  back 
to  look  after  her  harried  estate.  The  live  stock,  I  hear, 
went  without  water  for  three  whole  days,  and  the  poul 
try  would  all  have  been  in  kingdom-come  if  Sing  Lo, 
in  choosing  a  few  choice  birds  for  his  private  con 
sumption,  hadn't  happened  to  leave  the  run-door 
unlatched. 

I  was  foolish  enough  to  expect,  of  course,  that 
Duncan  might  nurse  some  slight  curiosity  as  to  his 
family  and  its  welfare.  This  will  be  his  third  day 
back,  and  he  has  neither  put  in  an  appearance  nor 
sent  a  word.  He's  busy,  of  course,  with  that  tangle 
to  unravel — but  where  there's  a  will  there's  usually  a 
way.  And  hope  dies  hard.  Yet  day  by  day  I  find 
less  bitterness  in  my  heart.  Those  earlier  hot  tides 
of  resentment  have  been  succeeded,  not  by  tranquillity 
or  even  indifference,  but  by  a  colder  and  more  judicial 

259 


260  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

attitude  toward  things  in  general.  I've  got  a  home 
and  a  family  to  fight  for — not  to  mention  a  baby  with 
prickly-heat — and  they  must  not  be  forgotten.  I 
have  the  consolation,  too,  of  knowing  that  the  fight 
doesn't  promise  to  be  a  losing  one.  I've  banked  on 
wheat,  and  old  Mother  Earth  is  not  going  to  betray 
me.  My  grain  has  ripened  miraculously  during  these 
last  few  weeks  of  hot  dry  weather.  It's  too  hot,  in  fact, 
for  my  harvest  threatens  to  come  on  with  a  rush.  But 
we'll  scramble  through  it,  in  some  way. 


Sunday  the  Nineteenth 

IT'S  only  three  days  since  I  wrote  those  last  lines. 
But  it  seems  a  long  time  back  to  last  Thursday.  So 
many,  many  things  have  happened  since  then. 

Friday  morning  broke  very  hot,  and  without  a 
breath  of  wind.  By  noon  it  was  stifling.  By  mid- 
afternoon  I  felt  strangely  tired,  and  even  more 
strangely  depressed.  I  even  attempted  to  shake  my 
self  together,  arguing  that  my  condition  was  purely 
mental,  for  I  had  remembered  that  it  was  unmistak 
ably  Friday,  a  day  of  ill-omen  to  the  superstitious. 

I  was  surprised,  between  four  and  five,  to  see  Whin-- 
stane  Sandy  come  in  from  his  work  and  busy  himself 
about  the  stables.  When  I  asked  him  the  reason  for 
this  premature  withdrawal  he  pointed  toward  a  low 
and  meek-looking  bank  of  clouds  just  above  the  south 
west  sky-line  and  announced  that  we  were  going  to 
have  a  "blow,"  as  he  called  it. 

I  was  inclined  to  doubt  this,  for  the  sun  was  still 
shining,  there  was  no  trace  of  a  breeze,  and  the  sky 
straight  over  my  head  was  a  pellucid  pale  azure.  But, 
when  I  came  to  notice  it,  there  was  an  unusual,  small 
stir  among  my  chickens,  the  cattle  were  restless,  and 

261 


262  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

one  would  occasionally  hold  its  nose  high  in  the  air 
and  then  indulge  in  a  lowing  sound.  Even  Bobs 
moved  peevishly  from  place  to  place,  plainly  disturbed 
by  more  than  the  flies  and  the  heat.  I  had  a  feeling, 
myself,  of  not  being  able  to  get  enough  air  into  my 
lungs,  a  depressed  and  disturbed  feeling  which  was 
nothing  more  than  the  barometer  of  my  body  trying 
to  tell  me  that  the  glass  was  falling,  and  falling 
forebodingly. 

By  this  time  I  could  see  Whinnie's  cloud-bank  ris 
ing  higher  above  the  horizon  and  becoming  more 
ragged  as  it  mushroomed  into  anvil-shaped  turrets. 
Then  a  sigh  or  two  of  hot  air,  hotter  even  than  the 
air  about  us,  disturbed  the  quietness  and  made  the 
level  floor  of  my  yellowing  wheat  undulate  a  little, 
like  a  breast  that  has  taken  a  quiet  breath  or  two. 
Then  faint  and  far-off  came  a  sound  like  the  leisurely 
firing  of  big  guns,  becoming  quicker  and  louder  as 
the  ragged  arch  of  the  storm  crept  over  the  sun  and 
marched  down  on  us  with  strange  twistings  and  writh- 
ings  and  up-boilings  of  its  tawny  mane. 

"Ye'd  best  be  makin'  things  ready !"  Whinnie  called 
out  to  me.  But  even  before  I  had  my  windows  down 
little  eddies  of  dust  were  circling  about  the  shack. 
Then  came  a  long  and  sucking  sigh  of  wind,  followed 
by  a  hot  calm  too  horrible  to  be  endured,  a  hot  calm 
from  the  stifling  center  of  which  your  spirit  cried 
out  for  whatever  was  destined  to  happen  to  happen 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  263 

at  once.  The  next  moment  brought  its  answer  to  that 
foolish  prayer,  a  whining  and  whistling  of  wind  that 
shook  our  little  shell  of  a  house  on  its  foundations,  a 
lurid  flash  or  two,  and  then  the  tumult  of  the  storm 
itself. 

The  room  where  I  stood  with  my  children  grew  sud 
denly  and  uncannily  dark.  I  could  hear  Struthers 
calling  thinly  from  the  kitchen  door  to  Whinnie,  who 
apparently  was  making  a  belated  effort  to  get  my 
chicken-run  gate  open  and  my  fowls  under  cover.  I 
could  hear  a  scattering  drive  of  big  rain-drops  on  the 
roof,  solemn  and  soft,  like  the  fall  of  plump  frogs. 
But  by  the  time  Whinnie  was  in  through  the  kitchen 
door  this  had  changed.  It  had  changed  into  a  pas 
sionate  and  pulsing  beat  of  rain,  whipped  and  lashed 
by  the  wind  that  shook  the  timbers  about  us.  The 
air,  however,  was  cooler  by  this  time,  and  it  was  easier 
to  breathe.  So  I  found  it  hard  to  understand  why 
Whinnie,  as  he  stood  in  the  half-light  by  one  of  the 
windows,  should  wear  such  a  look  of  protest  on  his 
morose  old  face  which  was  the  color  of  a  pigskin  sad 
dle  just  under  the  stirrup-flap. 

Even  when  I  heard  one  solitary  thump  on  the  roof 
over  my  head,  as  distinct  as  the  thump  of  a  hammer, 
I  failed  to  understand  what  was  worrying  my  hired 
man.  Then,  after  a  momentary  pause  in  the  rain,  the 
thumps  were  repeated.  They  were  repeated  in  a  rat 
tle  which  became  a  clatter  and  soon  grew  into  one 


264.  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHEH 

continuous  stream  of  sound,  like  a  thousand  machine- 
guns  all  going  off  at  once. 

I  realized  then  what  it  meant,  what  it  was.  It  was 
hail.  And  it  meant  that  we  were  being  "hailed  out." 

We  were  being  cannonaded  with  shrapnel  from  the 
skies.  We  were  being  deluged  with  blocks  of  ice 
almost  the  size  of  duck-eggs.  So  thunderous  was  the 
noise  that  I  had  no  remembrance  when  the  window- 
panes  on  the  west  side  of  the  house  were  broken.  It 
wasn't,  in  fact,  until  I  beheld  the  wind  and  water  blow 
ing  in  through  the  broken  sashes  that  I  awakened  to 
what  had  happened.  But  I  did  nothing  to  stop  the 
flood.  I  merely  sat  there  with  my  two  babes  in  my 
arms  and  my  Dinkie  pressed  in  close  between  my 
knees,  in  a  foolishly  .crouching  and  uncomfortable 
position,  as  though  I  wanted  to  shield  their  tender 
little  bodies  with  my  own.  I  remember  seeing 
Struthers  run  gabbing  and  screaming  about  the  room 
and  then  try  to  bury  herself  under  her  mattress,  like 
the  silly  old  she-ostrich  she  was,  with  her  number 
sevens  sticking  out  from  under  the  bedding.  I  remem 
ber  seeing  Whinnie  picking  up  one  of  the  white  things 
that  had  rolled  in  through  the  broken  window.  It  was 
oblong,  and  about  as  big  as  a  pullet's  egg,  but  more 
irregular  in  shape.  It  was  clear  on  the  outside  but 
milky  at  the  center,  making  me  think  of  a  half-cooked 
globe  of  tapioca.  But  it  was  a  stone  of  solid  ice. 
And  thousands  and  thousands  of  stones  like  that,  mil- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  266 

lions  of  them,  were  descending  on  my  wheat,  were 
thrashing  down  my  half -ripened  oats,  were  flailing  the 
world  and  beating  the  life  and  beauty  out  of  my  crops. 

The  storm  ended  almost  as  abruptly  as  it  had  begun. 
The  hammers  of  Thor  that  were  trying  to  pound  my 
lonely  little  prairie-house  to  pieces  were  withdrawn, 
the  tumult  stopped,  and  the  light  grew  stronger. 
Whinstane  Sandy  even  roused  himself  and  moved 
toward  the  door,  which  he  opened  with  the  hand  of  a 
sleep-walker,  and  stood  staring  out.  I  could  see 
reflected  in  that  seamed  old  face  the  desolation  which 
for  a  minute  or  two  I  didn't  have  the  heart  to  look 
upon.  I  knew,  even  before  I  got  slowly  up  and  fol 
lowed  him  toward  the  door,  that  our  crop  was  gone, 
that  we  had  lost  everything. 

I  stood  in  the  doorway,  staring  out  at  what,  only 
that  morning,  had  been  a  world  golden  with  promise, 
rich  and  bountiful  and  beautiful  to  the  eye  and  blessed 
in  the  sight  of  God.  And  now,  at  one  stroke,  it  was 
all  wiped  out.  As  far  as  the  eye  could  see  I  beheld 
only  flattened  and  shredded  ruin.  Every  acre  of  my 
crop  was  gone.  My  year's  work  had  been  for  noth 
ing,  my  blind  planning,  my  petty  scheming  and  con 
triving,  my  foolish  little  hopes  and  dreams,  all,  all 
were  there,  beaten  down  into  the  mud. 

Yet,  oddly  enough,  it  did  not  stir  in  me  any  quick 
and  angry  passion  of  protest.  It  merely  left  me  mute 
and  stunned,  staring  at  it  with  the  eyes  of  the  ox, 


266  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

with  a  dull  wonder  in  my  heart  and  a  duller  sense  of 
deprivation  away  off  at  the  back  of  my  brain.  I 
scarcely  noticed  when  little  Dinkie  toddled  out  and 
possessed  himself  of  a  number  of  the  larger  hail 
stones,  which  he  promptly  proceeded  to  suck.  When  a 
smaller  one  melted  in  the  warmth  of  his  hand,  he  stared 
down  at  the  emptiness  between  his  little  brown  fin 
gers,  wondering  where  his  pretty  pebble  had  vanished 
to,  just  as  I  wondered  where  my  crop  had  gone. 

But  it's  gone.  There's  no  doubt  of  that.  The  hail 
went  from  southwest  to  northeast,  in  a  streak  about 
three  miles  wide,  like  a  conquering  army,  licking  up 
everything  as  it  went.  Whinnie  says  that  it's  the 
will  of  God.  Struthers,  resurrected  from  her  mattress, 
proclaims  that  it's  Fate  punishing  us  for  our  sins. 
My  head  tells  me  that  it's  barometric  laws,  operating 
along  their  own  ineluctable  lines.  But  that  doesn't 
salve  the  sore. 

For  the  rest  of  the  afternoon  we  stood  about  like 
Italian  peasants  after  an  earthquake,  possessed  of  a 
sort  of  collective  mutism,  doing  nothing,  saying  noth 
ing,  thinking  nothing.  Even  my  seven  dead  pullets, 
Avhich  had  been  battered  to  death  by  the  hail,  were  left 
to  lie  where  they  had  fallen.  I  noticed  a  canvas  car 
rier  for  a  binder  which  Whinnie  had  been  mending. 
It  was  riddled  like  a  sieve.  If  this  worried  me,  it 
worried  me  only  vaguely.  It  wasn't  until  I  remem 
bered  that  there  would  be  no  wheat  for  that  binder 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  267 

to  cut  and  no  sheaves  for  that  carrier  to  bear,  that 
the  extent  of  what  had  befallen  Alabama  Ranch  once 
more  came  fully  home  to  me.  It  takes  time  to  digest 
such  things,  just  as  it  takes  time  to  reorganize  your 
world.  The  McKails,  for  the  second  time,  have  been 
cleaned  to  the  bones.  We  ought  to  be  getting  used  to 
it,  for  it's  the  second  time  we've  gone  bust  in  a  year ! 

It  wasn't  until  yesterday  morning  that  any  kind  of 
perspective  came  back  to  us.  I  went  to  bed  the  night 
before  wondering  about  Dinky-Dunk  and  hoping 
against  hope  that  he'd  come  galloping  over  to  make 
sure  his  family  were  still  in  the  land  of  the  living. 
But  he  didn't  come.  And  before  noon  I  learned  that 
Casa  Grande  had  not  been  touched  by  the  hail.  That 
at  least  was  a  relief,  for  it  meant  that  Duncan  was 
safe  and  sound. 

In  a  way,  yesterday,  there  was  nothing  to  do,  and 
yet  there  was  a  great  deal  to  do.  It  reminded  me  of 
the  righting  up  after  a  funeral.  But  I  refused  to 
think  of  anything  beyond  the  immediate  tasks  in  hand. 
I  just  did  what  had  to  be  done,  and  went  to  bed  again 
dog-tired.  But  I  had  nightmare,  and  woke  up  in  the 
middle  of  the  night  crying  for  all  I  was  worth.  I 
seemed  alone  in  an  empty  world,  a  world  without  mean 
ing  or  mercy,  and  there  in  the  blackness  of  the  night 
when  the  tides  of  life  run  lowest,  I  lay  with  my  hand 
pressed  against  my  heart,  with  the  feeling  that  there 
was  nothing  whatever  left  in  existence  to  make  it 


268  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

worth  while.  Then  Pee-Wee  stirred  and  whimpered, 
and  when  I  lifted  him  into  my  bed  and  held  him 
against  my  breast,  the  nearness  of  his  body  brought 
warmth  and  consolation  to  mine,  and  I  remembered 
that  I  was  still  a  mother. 

It  was  this  morning  (Sunday)  that  Dinky -Dunk 
appeared  at  Alabama  Ranch.  I  had  looked  for  him 
and  longed  for  him,  in  secret,  and  my  heart  should 
have  leapt  up  with  gladness  at  the  sight  of  him.  But 
it  didn't.  It  couldn't.  It  was  like  asking  a  millstone 
to  pirouette. 

In  the  first  place,  everything  seemed  wrong.  I  had 
a  cold  in  the  head  from  the  sudden  drop  in  the  tem 
perature,  and  I  was  arrayed  in  that  drab  old  ging 
ham  wrapper  which  Dinkie  had  cut  holes  in  with 
Struthcrs'  scissors,  for  I  hadn't  cared  much  that  morn 
ing  when  I  dressed  whether  I  looked  like  a  totem-pole 
or  a  Stoney  squaw.  And  the  dregs  of  what  I'd  been 
through  during  the  last  two  days  were  stili  sour  in 
the  bottom  of  my  heart.  I  was  a  Job  in  petticoats,  a 
mutineer  against  man  and  God,  a  nihilist  and  an 
I.  W.  W.  all  in  one.  And  Dinky-Dunk  appeared  in 
Lady  Alicia's  car,  in  her  car,  carefully  togged  out  in 
his  Sunday  best,  with  that-  strangely  alien  aspect 
which  citified  clothes  can  give  to  the  rural  toiler  when 
he  emerges  from  the  costume  of  his  kind. 

But  it  wasn't  merely  that  he  came  arrayed  in  this 
outer  sh*ll  of  affluence  and  prosperity.  It  was  more 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  269 

that  there  was  a  sense  of  triumph  in  his  heart  which 
he  couldn't  possibly  conceal.  And  I  wasn't  slow  to 
realize  what  it  meant.  I  was  a  down-and-outer  now, 
and  at  his  mercy.  He  could  have  his  way  with  me, 
without  any  promise  of  protest.  And  whatever  he 
might  have  done,  or  might  yet  do,  it  was  ordained 
that  I  in  my  meekness  should  bow  to  the  yoke.  All 
that  I  must  remember  was  that  he  stood  my  lord  and 
master.  I  had  made  my  foolish  little  struggle  to  be 
mistress  of  my  own  destiny,  and  now  that  I  had  failed, 
and  failed  utterly,  I  must  bend  to  whatever  might  be 
given  to  me. 

"It's  hard  luck,  Chaddie,"  he  said,  with  a  pretense 
at  being  sympathetic.  But  there  was  no  real  sorrow 
in  his  eye  as  he  stood  there  surveying  my  devastated 
ranch. 

"Nix  on  that  King  Cophetua  stuff!"  I  curtly  and 
Vulgarly  proclaimed. 

"Just  what  do  you  mean?"  he  asked,  studying  my 
face. 

"Kindly  can  the  condescension  stuff!"  I  repeated, 
taking  a  wayward  satisfaction  out  of  shocking  him 
with  the  paraded  vulgarity  of  my  phrasing. 

"That  doesn't  sound  like  you,"  he  said,  naturally 
surprised,  I  suppose,  that  I  didn't  melt  into  his  arms. 

"Why  not  ?"  I  inquired,  noticing  that  he  no  longer 
cared  to  meet  my  eye. 

"It  sounds  hard,"  he  said. 


270  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Well,  some  man  has  said  that  a  hard  soil  makes 
a  hard  race,"  I  retorted,  with  a  glance  about  at  my 
ruined  wheatlands.  "Did  you  have  a  pleasant  time 
in  Chicago?" 

He  looked  up  quickly. 

"I  wasn't  in  Chicago,"  he  promptly  protested. 

"Then  that  woman  lied,  after  all,"  I  remarked, 
with  a  lump  of  Scotch  granite  where  my  heart  ought 
to  have  been.  For  I  could  see  by  his  face  that  he 
knew,  without  hesitation,  the  woman  I  meant. 

"Isn't  that  an  unnecessarily  harsh  word  ?"  he  asked, 
trying,  of  course,  to  shield  her  to  the  last.  And  if 
he  had  not  exactly  winced,  he  had  done  the  next 
thing  to  it. 

"What  would  you  call  it  ?"  I  countered.  It  wouldn't 
have  taken  a  microphone,  I  suppose,  to  discover  the 
hostility  in  my  tone.  "And  would  it  be  going  too  far 
to  inquire  just  where  you  were?"  I  continued  as  I  saw 
he  had  no  intention  of  answering  my  first  question. 

"I  was  at  the  Coast,"  he  said,  compelling  himself  to 
meet  my  glance. 

"I'm  sorry  that  I  cut  your  holiday  short,"  I 
told  him. 

"It  was  scarcely  a  holiday,"  he  remonstrated. 

"What  would  you  call  it  then?"  I  asked. 

"It  was  purely  a  business  trip,"  he  retorted. 

There  had,  I  remembered,  been  a  great  deal  of  that 
business  during  the  past  few  months.  And  an  ice- 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  271 

cold  hand  squeezed  the  last  hope  of  hope  out  of  my 
heart.  She  had  been  at  the  Coast. 

"And  this  belated  visit  to  your  wife  and  children,  I 
presume,  is  also  for  business  purposes?"  I  inquired. 
But  he  was  able  to  smile  at  that,  for  all  my  iciness. 

"Is  it  belated?"  he  asked. 

"Wouldn't  you  call  it  that?"  I  quietly  inquired. 

"But  I  had  to  clear  up  that  case  of  the  stolen 
horses,"  he  protested,  "that  Sing  Lo  thievery." 

"Which  naturally  comes  before  one's  family,"  I 
ironically  reminded  him. 

"But  courts  are  courts,  Chaddie,"  he  maintained, 
with  a  pretense  of  patience. 

"And  consideration  is  consideration,"  I  rather 
wearily  amended. 

"We  can't  always  do  what  we  want  to,"  he 
next  remarked,  apparently  intent  on  being  genially 
axiomatic. 

"Then  to  what  must  the  humble  family  attribute 
this  visit?"  I  inquired,  despising  that  tone  of  mock 
ery  into  which  I  had  fallen  yet  seeming  unable  to 
drag  myself  out  of  its  muck-bottom  depths. 

"To  announce  that  I  intend  to  return  to  them,"  he 
asserted,  though  it  didn't  seem  an  easy  statement 
to  make. 

It  rather  took  my  breath  away,  for  a  moment.  But 
Reason  remained  on  her  throne.  It  was  too  much  like 
sticking  spurs  into  a  dead  horse.  There  was  too  much 


272  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

that  could  not  be  forgotten.  And  I  calmly  reminded 
Dinky-Dunk  that  the  lightest  of  heads  can  sometimes 
have  the  longest  of  memories. 

"Then  you  don't  want  me  back?"  he  demanded, 
apparently  embarrassed  by  my  lack  of  hospitality. 

"It  all  depends  on  what  you  mean  by  that  word," 
I  answered,  speaking  as  judicially  as  I  was  able.  "If 
by  coming  back  you  mean  coming  back  to  this  house, 
I  suppose  you  have  a  legal  right  to  do  so.  But  if 
it  means  anything  more,  I'm  afraid  it  can't  be  done. 
You  see,  Dinky-Dunk,  I've  got  rather  used  to  single 
harness  again,  and  I've  learned  to  think  and  act  for 
myself,  and  there's  a  time  when  continued  unfairness 
can  kill  the  last  little  spark  of  friendliness  in  any 
woman's  heart.  It's  not  merely  that  I'm  tired  of  it 
all.  But  I'm  tired  of  being  tired,  if  you  know  what 
that  means.  I  don't  even  know  what  I'm  going  to  do. 
Just  at  present,  in  fact,  I  don't  want  to  think  about  it. 
But  I'd  much  prefer  being  alone  until  I  am  able  to 
straighten  things  out  to  my  own  satisfaction." 

"I'm  sorry,"  said  Dinky-Dunk,  looking  so  crest 
fallen  that  for  a  moment  I  in  turn  felt  almost  sorry 
for  him. 

"Isn't  it  rather  late  for  that  ?"  I  reminded  him. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  it  is,"  he  admitted,  with  a  disturb 
ing  new  note  of  humility.  Then  he  looked  up  at  me, 
almost  defiantly.  "But  you  need  my  help." 

It  was  masterful  man,  once  more  asserting  himself., 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  373 

It  was  a  trivial  misstep,  but  a  fatal  one.  It  betrayed, 
at  a  flash,  his  entire  mis  judgment  of  me,  of  my  feel 
ings,  of  what  I  was  and  what  I  intended  to  be. 

"I'm  afraid  I've  rather  outlived  that  period  of 
Bashi-Bazookism,"  I  coolly  and  quietly  explained  to 
my  lord  and  master.  "You  may  have  the  good  luck 
to  be  confronting  me  when  I  seem  to  be  floored.  I've 
been  hailed  out,  it's  true.  But  that  has  happened  to 
other  people,  and  they  seem  to  have  survived.  And 
there  are  worse  calamities,  I  find,  than  the  loss  of 
a  crop." 

"Are  you  referring  to  anything  that  I  have  done  ?" 
asked  Dinky-Dunk,  with  a  slightly  belligerent  look 
in  his  eye. 

"If  the  shoe  fits,  put  it  on,"  I  observed. 

"But  there  are  certain  things  I  want  to  explain," 
he  tried  to  argue,  with  the  look  of  a  man  confronted 
by  an  overdraft  on  his  patience. 

"Somebody  has  said  that  a  friend,"  I  reminded  him, 
"is  a  person  to  whom  one  need  never  explain.  And 
any  necessity  for  explanation,  you  see,  removes  us 
even  from  the  realm  of  friendship." 

"But,  hang  it  all,  I'm  your  husband,"  protested  my 
obtuse  and  somewhat  indignant  interlocutor. 

"We  all  have  our  misfortunes,"  I  found  the  heart, 
or  rather  the  absence  of  heart,  to  remark. 

"I'm  afraid  this  isn't  a  very  good  beginning,"  said 
Dinky-Dunk,  his  dignity  more  ruffled  than  ever. 


274  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"It's  not  a  beginning  at  all,"  I  reminded  him.  "It's 
more  like  an  ending." 

That  kept  him  silent  for  quite  a  long  while. 

"I  suppose  yon  despise  me,"  he  finally  remarked. 

"It's  scarcely  so  active  an  emotion,"  I  tried  to  pun 
ish  him  by  retorting. 

"But  I  at  least  insist  on  explaining  what  took  me 
to  the  Coast,"  he  contended. 

"That  is  scarcely  necessary,"  I  told  him. 

"Then  you  know?"  he  asked. 

"I  imagine  the  whole  country-side  does,"  I  observed. 

He  made  a  movement  of  mixed  anger  and  protest. 

"I  went  to  Vancouver  because  the  government  had 
agreed  to  take  over  my  Vancouver  Island  water-front 
for  their  new  shipbuilding  yards.  If  you've  for 
gotten  just  what  that  means,  I'd  like  to  remind  you 
that  there's " 

"I  don't  happen  to  have  forgotten,"  I  interrupted, 
wondering  why  news  which  at  one  time  would  have 
set  me  on  fire  could  now  leave  me  quite  cold.  "But 
what  caused  the  government  to  change  its  mind?" 

"Allie !"  he  said,  after  a  moment's  hesitation,  fixing 
a  slightly  combative  eye  on  mine. 

"She  seems  to  have  almost  unlimited  powers,"  I 
observed  as  coolly  as  I  could,  making  an  effort  to  get 
my  scattered  thoughts  into  line  again. 

"On  the  contrary,"  Dinky-Dunk  explained  with 
quite  painful  politeness,  "it  was  merely  the  accident 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  275 

that  she  happened  to  know  the  naval  officer  on  the 
Imperial  Board.  She  was  at  Banff  the  week  the  board 
was  there,  and  she  wa»  able  to  put  in  a  good  word 
for  the  Vancouver  Island  site.  And  the  Imperial 
verdict  swung  our  own  government  officials  over.'* 

"You  were  lucky  to  have  such  an  attractive  wire 
puller,"  I  frigidly  announced. 

"The  luck  wasn't  altogether  on  my  side,"  Dinky- 
Dunk  almost  as  frigidly  retorted,  "when  you  remem 
ber  that  it  was  giving  her  a  chance  to  get  rid  of  a 
ranch  she  was  tired  of !" 

I  did  my  best  to  hide  my  surprise,  but  it  wasn't 
altogether  a  success.  The  dimensions  of  the  move 
ment,  apparently,  were  much  greater  than  my  poor 
little  brain  had  been  able  to  grasp. 

"Do  you  mean  it's  going  to  let  you  take  Casa 
Grande  off  her  ladyship's  hands?"  I  diffidently  in 
quired. 

"That's  already  arranged  for,"  Dinky-Dunk  quite 
casually  informed  me.  We  were  a  couple  of  play 
actors,  I  felt,  each  deep  in  a  role  of  his  own,  each 
stirred  much  deeper  than  he  was  ready  to  admit,  and 
each  a  little  afraid  of  the  other. 

"You  are  to  be  congratulated,"  I  told  Dinky-Dunk, 
chilled  in  spite  of  myself,  never  for  a  moment  quite 
able  to  forget  the  sinister  shadow  of  Lady  Alicia 
which  lay  across  our  trodden  little  path  of  every 
day  life. 


276  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"It  was  you  and  the  kiddies  I  was  thinking  of," 
said  my  husband,  in  a  slightly  remote  voice.  And  the 
mockery  of  that  statement,  knowing  what  I  knew,  was 
too  much  for  me. 

"I'm  sorry  you  didn't  think  of  us  a  little  sooner," 
I  observed.  And  I  had  the  bitter-sweet  reward  of 
seeing  a  stricken  light  creep  up  into  Dinky- 
Dunk's  eyes. 

"Why  do  you  say  that?"  he  asked. 

But  I  didn't  answer  that  question  of  his.  Instead, 
I  asked  him  another. 

"Did  you  know  that  Lady  Alicia  came  here  and 
announced  that  she  was  in  love  with  you?"  I 
demanded,  resolved  to  let  the  light  in  to  that  tangled 
mess  which  was  fermenting  in  the  silo  of  my  soul. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  quietly  affirmed,  as  he  hung  his 
head.  "She  told  me  about  it.  And  it  was  awful.  It 
should  never  have  happened.  It  made  me  ashamed 
even — even  to  face  you !" 

"That  was  natural,"  I  agreed,  with  my  heart  still 
steeled  against  him. 

"It  makes  a  fool  of  a  man,"  he  protested,  "a  situa 
tion  like  that." 

"Then  the  right  sort  of  man  wouldn't  encourage 
it,"  I  reminded  him,  "wouldn't  even  permit  it."  And 
still  again  I  caught  that  quick  movement  of  impa 
tience  from  him. 

"What's  that  sort  of  thing  to  a  man  of  my  age?" 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  277 

he  demanded.  "When  you  get  to  where  I  am  you 
don't  find  love  looming  so  large  on  the  horizon. 
What—" 

"No,  it  clearly  doesn't  loom  so  large,"  I  interrupted. 

"What  you  want  then,"  went  on  Dinky-Dunk, 
ignoring  me,  "is  power,  success,  the  consolation  of 
knowing  you're  not  a  failure  in  life.  That's  the  big 
issue,  and  that's  the  stake  men  play  big  for,  and  play 
hard  for." 

It  was,  I  remembered  in  my  bitterness  of  soul,  what 
I  myself  had  been  playing  hard  for — but  I  had  lost. 
And  it  had  left  my  heart  dry.  It  had  left  my  heart 
so  dry  that  my  own  Dinky-Dunk,  standing  there 
before  me  in  the  open  sunlight,  seemed  millions  of 
miles  removed  from  me,  mysteriously  depersonalized, 
as  remote  in  spirit  as  a  stranger  from  Mars  come  to 
converse  about  an  inter-stellar  telephone-system. 

"Then  you've  really  achieved  your  ambition,"  I 
reminded  my  husband,  as  he  stood  studying  a  face 
which  I  tried  to  keep  tranquil  under  his  inspection. 

"Oh,  no,"  he  corrected,  "only  a  small  part  of  it." 

"What's  the  rest?"  I  indifferently  inquired,  won 
dering  why  most  of  life's  victories,  after  all,  were 
mere  Pyrrhic  victories. 

"You,"  declared  Dinky-Dunk,  with  a  reckless  light 
in  his  eyes.  "You,  and  the  children,  now  that  I'm  in 
a  position  to  give  them  what  they  want." 

"But  are  you?"  I  queried. 


278  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"Well,  that's  what  I'm  coming  back  to  demon 
strate,"  he  found  the  courage  to  assert. 

"To  them?"  I  asked. 

"To  all  of  you!"  he  said  with  a  valiant  air  of 
finality. 

I  told  him  it  was  useless,  but  he  retorted  that  he 
didn't  propose  to  have  that  stop  him.  I  explained  to 
him  that  it  would  be  embarrassing,  but  he  parried 
that  claim  by  protesting  that  sacrifice  was  good  for 
the  soul.  I  asserted  that  it  would  be  a  good  deal  of 
a  theatricality,  under  the  circumstances,  but  he 
attempted  to  brush  this  aside  by  stating  that  what  he 
had  endured  for  years  might  be  repeated  by  patience. 

So  Dinky-Dunk  is  coming  back  to  Alabama  Ranch ! 
It  sounds  momentous,  and  yet,  I  know  in  my  heart, 
that  it  doesn't  mean  so  very  much.  He  will  sleep 
under  the  same  roof  with  me  as  remote  as  though  he 
were  reposing  a  thousand  miles  away.  He  will  break 
fast  and  go  forth  to  his  work,  and  my  thoughts  will 
not  be  able  to  go  with  him.  He  will  return  with  the 
day's  weariness  in  his  bones,  but  a  weariness  which 
I  can  neither  fathom  nor  explain  in  my  own  will  keep 
my  blood  from  warming  at  the  sound  of  his  voice 
through  the  door.  Being  still  his  wife,  I  shall  have 
to  sew  and  mend  and  cook  for  him.  That  is  the  pen 
alty  of  prairie  life;  there  is  no  escape  from  pro- 
pinquit}'. 

But  that  life  can  go  on  in  this  way,  indefinitely,  is 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  270 

unthinkable.  What  will  happen,  I  don't  know.  But 
there  will  have  to  be  a  change,  somewhere.  There  will 
have  to  be  a  change,  but  I  am  too  tired  to  worry  over 
what  it  will  be.  I'm  too  tired  even  to  think  of  it. 
That's  something  which  lies  in  the  lap  of  Time. 


Saturday  the  Twenty-fifth 

DINKY-DUNK  is  back.  At  least  he  sleeps  and  break 
fasts  at  home,  but  the  rest  of  the  time  he  is  over  at 
Casa  Grande  getting  his  crop  cut.  He's  too  busy,  I 
fancy,  to  pay  much  attention  to  our  mutual  lack  of 
attention.  But  the  compact  was  made,  and  he  seems 
willing  to  comply  with  it.  The  only  ones  who  fail 
to  regard  it  are  the  children.  I  hadn't  counted  on 
them.  There  are  times,  accordingly,  when  they -some 
what  complicate  the  situation.  It  didn't  take  them 
long  to  get  re-acquainted  with  their  daddy.  I  could 
see,  from  the  first,  that  he  intended  to  be  very  con 
siderate  and  kind  with  them,  for  I'm  beginning  to 
realize  that  he  gets  a  lot  of  fun  out  of  the  kiddies. 
Pee-Wee  will  go  to  him,  now,  from  anybody.  He 
goes  with  an  unmistakable  expression  of  "Us-men- 
have-got-to-stick-together"  satisfaction  on  his  little 
face. 

But  Dinky-Dunk's  intimacies,  I'm  glad  to  say,  do 
not  extend  beyond  the  children.  Three  days  ago, 
though,  he  asked  me  about  turning  his  hogs  in  on  my 
land.  It  doesn't  sound  disturbingly  emotional.  But 
if  what's  left  of  my  crop,  of  course,  is  any  use  to 
Duncan,  he's  welcome  to  it.  ... 

280 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  281 

I  looked  for  that  letter  which  I  wrote  to  Dinky- 
Dunk  several  weeks  ago,  looked  for  it  for  an  hour  and 
more  this  morning,  but  haven't  succeeded  in  finding 
it.  I  was  sure  that  I'd  put  it  between  the  pages  of 
the  old  ranch  journal.  But  it's  not  there. 

Last  night  before  I  turned  in  I  read  all  of  Mere 
dith's  Modern  Love.  It  was  nice  to  remember  that 
once,  at  Box  Hill,  I'd  felt  the  living  clasp  of  the  hand 
which  had  written  that  wonderful  series  of  poems. 
But  never  before  did  I  quite  understand  that  elabo 
rated  essay  in  love-moods.  It  came  like  a  friendly 
voice,  like  an  understanding  comrade  who  knows  the 
world  better  than  I  do,  and  brought  me  comfort,  even 
though  the  sweetness  of  it  was  slightly  acidulated, 
like  a  lemon-drop.  And  as  for  myself,  I  suppose  I'll 
continue  to 

" sit  contentedly 

And  eat  my  pot  of  honey  on  the  grave." 


Sunday  the  Second 

I  HAVE  written  to  Uncle  Carlton  again,  asking  him 
about  my  Chilean  Nitrate  shares.  If  the  company's 
reorganized  and  the  mine's  opened  again,  surely  my 
stock  ought  to  be  worth  something. 

The  days  are  getting  shorter,  and  the  hot  weather 
is  over  for  good,  I  hope.  I  usually  like  autumn  on 
the  prairie,  but  the  thought  of  fall,  this  year,  doesn't 
fill  me  with  any  inordinate  joy.  I'm  unsettled  and 
atonic,  and  it's  just  as  well,  I  fancy,  that  I'm  wean 
ing  the  Twins. 

It's  not  the  simple  operation  I'd  expected,  but  tht 
worst  is  already  over.  Pee-Wec  is  betraying  unmis 
takable  serpentine  powers,  and  it's  no  longer  safe  to 
leave  him  on  a  bed.  Poppsy  is  a  fastidious  little  lady, 
and  apparently  a  bit  of  a  philosopher.  She  is  her 
father's  favorite.  Whinstane  Sandy  is  loyal  to  little 
Dinkie,  and,  now  that  the  evenings  are  longer,  regales 
him  on  stories,  stories  which  the  little  tot  can  only 
half  understand.  But  they  must  always  be  about  ani 
mals,  and  Whinnie  seems  to  run  to  wolves.  He's  told 
the  story  of  the  skater  and  the  wolves,  with  personal 
embellishments,  and  Little  Red  Riding-Hood  in  a 

282 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  283 

version  all  his  own,  and  last  night,  I  noticed,  he 
recounted  the  tale  of  the  woman  in  the  sleigh  with 
her  children  when  the  pack  of  wolves  pursued  her. 
And  first,  to  save  herself  and  her  family,  she  threw 
her  little  baby  out  to  the  brutes.  And  when  they  had 
gained  on  her  once  more,  she  threw  out  her  little  girl, 
and  then  her  little  boy,  and  then  her  biggest  boy  of 
ten.  And  when  she  reached  a  settlement  and  told  of 
her  deliverance,  the  Oldest  Settler  took  a  wood-ax  and 
clove  her  head  clear  down  to  the  shoulder-blades — 
the  same,  of  course,  being  a  punishment  for  saving 
herself  at  the  expense  of  her  little  ones. 

My  Dinkie  sat  wriggling  his  toes  with  delight,  the 
tale  being  of  that  gruesome  nature  which  appeals  to 
him.  It  must  have  been  tried  on  countless  other  chil 
dren,  for,  despite  Whinnie's  autobiographical  inter 
jections,  the  yarn  is  an  old  and  venerable  one,  a  primi 
tive  Russian  folk-tale  which  even  Browning  worked 
over  in  his  Ivan  Ivanovitch. 

Dinky-Dunk,  wandering  in  on  the  tail  end  of  it, 
remarked :  "That's  a  fine  story,  that  is,  with  all  those 
coyotes  singing  out  there !" 

"The  chief  objection  to  it,"  I  added,  "is  that  the 
lady  didn't  drop  her  husband  over  first." 

Dinky-Dunk  looked  down  at  me  as  he  filled  his  pipe. 

"But  the  husband,  as  I  remember  the  story,  had 
been  left  behind  to  do  what  a  mere  husband  could  to 
save  their  home,"  my  spouse  quietly  reminded  me. 


THERE  was  a  heavy  frost  last  night.  It  makes  me 
feel  that  summer  is  over.  Dinky-Dunk  asked  me 
yesterday  why  I  disliked  Casa  Grande  and  never  ven 
tured  over  into  that  neighborhood.  I  evaded  any 
answer  by  announcing  that  there  were  very  few  things 
I  liked  nowadays.  .  . 

Only  once,  lately,  have  we  spoken  of  Lady  Allie. 
It  was  Dinky-Dunk,  in  fact,  who  first  brought  up  her 
name  in  speaking  of  the  signing  of  the  transfer- 
papers. 

"Is  it  true,"  I  found  the  courage  to  ask,  "that  you 
knew  your  cousin  quite  intimately  as  a  girl?" 

Dinky-Dunk  laughed  as  he  tamped  down  his  pipe. 

"Yes,  it  must  have  been  quite  intimately,"  he 
acknowledged.  "For  when  she  was  seven  and  I  was 
nine  we  went  all  the  way  down  Teignmouth  Hill 
together  in  an  empty  apple-barrel — than  which  noth 
ing  that  I  know  of  could  possibly  be  more  intimate !" 

I  couldn't  join  him  in  his  mirth  over  that  incident, 
for  I  happened  to  remember  the  look  on  Lady  Alicia's 
face  when  she  once  watched  Dinky-Dunk  mount  his 
mustang  and  ride  away.  "Aren't  men  lawds  of  cre- 

284 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  285 

ation  ?"  she  had  dreamily  inquired.  "Not  after  you've 
lived  with  them  for  a  couple  of  years,"  I  had  been 
heartless  enough  to  retort,  just  to  let  her  know  that 
I  didn't  happen  to  have  a  skin  like  a  Douglas  pine. 


Sunday  the  Sixteenth 

I'VE  just  had  a  letter  from  Uncle  Carlton.  It's  a 
very  long  and  businesslike  letter,  in  which  he  goes 
into  details  as  to  how  our  company  has  been  incor 
porated  in  La  Association  de  Productores  de  Salitre 
de  Chile,  with  headquarters  at  Valparaiso.  It's  a  new 
and  rather  unexpected  arrangement,  but  he  prophesies 
that  with  nitrate  at  ten  shillings  per  Spanish  quintal 
the  returns  on  the  investment,  under  the  newer  condi 
tions,  should  be  quite  satisfactory.  He  goes  on  to 
explain  how  nitrate  is  shipped  in  bags  of  one  hundred 
kilos,  and  the  price  includes  the  bags,  but  the  weight 
is  taken  on  the  nitrate  only,  involving  a  deduction 
from  the  gross  weight  of  seven-tenths  per  cent. 
Then  he  ambles  off  into  a  long  discussion  of  how  the 
fixation  method  from  the  air  may  eventually  threaten 
the  stability  of  our  entire  amalgamated  mines,  but 
probably  not  during  his  life-time  or  even  my  own. 
And  I  had  to  read  the  letter  over  for  the  third  time 
before  I  winnowed  from  it  the  obscure  but  essential 
kernel  that  my  shares  from  this  year  forward  should 
bring  me  in  an  annual  dividend  of  at  least  tM'o  thou 
sand,  but  more  probably  three,  and  possibly  even  four, 

286 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  287 

once  the  transportation  situation  is  normalized,  but 
depending  largely,  of  course,  on  the  labor  conditions 
obtaining  in  Latin  America — and  much  more  along 
the  same  lines. 

That  news  of  my  long-forgotten  and  long-neglected 
nest-egg  should  have  made  me  happy.  But  it  didn't. 
I  couldn't  quite  react  to  it.  As  usual,  I  thought  of 
the  children  first,  and  from  their  standpoint  it  did 
bring  a  sort  of  relief.  It  was  consoling,  of  course, 
to  know  that,  whatever  happened,  they  could  have 
woolens  on  their  little  tummies  and  shoe-leather  on 
their  little  piggies.  But  the  news  didn't  come  with 
sufficient  force  to  shock  the  dull  gray  emptiness  out 
of  existence.  I've  even  been  wondering  if  there's  any 
news  that  could.  For  the  one  thing  that  seems  always 
to  face  me  is  the  absence  of  intensity  from  life.  Can 
it  be,  I  found  myself  asking  to-day,  that  it's  youth, 
golden  youth,  that  is  slipping  away  from  me? 

It  startled  me  a  little,  to  have  to  face  that  question. 
But  I  shake  my  fist  in  the  teeth  of  Time.  I  refuse 
to  surrender.  I  shall  not  allow  myself  to  become  anti 
quated.  I'm  on  the  wrong  track,  in  some  way,  but 
before  I  dry  up  into  a  winter  apple  I'm  going  to  find 
out  where  the  trouble  is,  and  correct  it.  I  never  was 
much  of  a  sleep-walker.  I  want  life,  Life — and 
oodles  of  it.  ... 

Among  other  things,  by  the  way,  which  I've  been 
missing  are  books.  They  at  least  are  to  be  had  for 


288  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

the  buying,  and  I've  decided  there's  no  excuse  for  let 
ting  the  channels  of  my  mind  get  moss-grown.  I've 
had  a  "serious  but  not  fatal  wound,"  as  the  news 
papers  say,  to  my  personal  vanity,  but  there's  no 
use  in  letting  go  of  things,  at  my  time  of  life.  Pee- 
Wee,  I'm  sure,  will  never  be  satisfied  with  an  empty- 
headed  old  frump  for  a  mother,  and  Dinkie  is  already 
asking  questions  that  are  slightly  disturbing.  Yester 
day,  in  his  bath,  he  held  his  hand  over  his  heart.  He 
held  it  there  for  quite  a  long  time,  and  then  he  looked 
at  me  with  widening  eyes.  "Mummy,"  he  called  out, 
"I've  got  a  m'sheen  inside  me!"  And  Whinnie's 
explorations  are  surely  worth  emulating.  I  too  have 
a  machine  inside  me  which  some  day  I'll  be  compelled 
to  rediscover.  It  is  a  machine  which,  at  present,  is 
merely  a  pump,  though  the  ancients,  I  believe, 
regarded  it  as  the  seat  of  the  emotions. 


Saturday  the  Twenty-ninth 

DINKY-DUNK  is  quite  subtle.  He  is  ignoring  me, 
as  a  modern  army  of  assault  ignores  a  fortress  by 
simply  circling  about  its  forbidding  walls  and  leav 
ing  it  in  the  rear.  But  I  can  see  that  he  is  deliber 
ately  and  patiently  making  love  to  my  children.  He 
is  entrenching  himself  in  their  affection. 

He  is,  of  course,  their  father,  and  it  is  not  for  me 
to  interfere.  Last  night,  in  fact,  when  Pee-Wee  cried 
for  his  dad,  poor  old  Dinky-Dunk's  face  looked  almost 
radiumized.  He  has  announced  that  on  Tuesday, 
when  he  will  have  to  go  in  to  Buckhorn,  he  intends  to 
carry  along  the  three  kiddies  and  have  their  photo 
graph  taken.  It  reminded  me  that  I  had  no  picture 
whatever  of  the  Twins.  And  that  reminded  me,  in 
turn,  of  what  a  difference  there  is  between  your  first 
child  and  the  tots  who  come  later.  Little  Dinkie, 
being  a  novelty,  was  followed  by  a  phosphorescent 
wake  of  diaries  and  snap-shots  and  weigh-scales  and 
growth-records,  with  his  birthdays  duly  reckoned,  not 
by  the  year,  but  by  the  month. 

It's  not  that  I  love  the  Twins  less.  It's  only  that 
the  novelty  has  passed.  And  in  one  way  it's  a  good 
thing,  for  over  your  second  and  third  baby  you  worry 

289 


290  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

less.  You  know  what  is  needed,  and  how  to  do  it. 
You  blaze  }rour  trail,  as  a  mother,  with  your  first-born. 
You  build  your  road,  and  after  that  you  are  no  longer 
a  pioneer.  You  know  the  way  you  have  to  go,  hence 
forth,  and  you  follow  it.  It  is  less  a  Great  Adven 
ture,  perhaps,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  double- 
pointed  tooth  of  Anxiety  does  not  rowel  quite  so  often 
at  the  core  of  your  heart.  .  .  .  I've  been  wonder 
ing  if,  with  the  coming  of  the  children,  there  is  not 
something  which  slips  away  from  the  relationship 
between  husband  and  wife.  That  there  is  a  difference 
is  not  to  be  denied.  There  was  a  time  when  I  resented 
this  and  tried  to  fight  against  it.  But  I  wasn't  big 
enough,  I  suppose,  to  block  the  course  of  Nature. 
And  it  was  Nature,  you  have  to  admit  when  you  come 
to  look  it  honestly  in  the  face,  Nature  in  her  inexor 
able  economy  working  out  her  inexorable  ends.  If  I 
hadn't  loved  Dinky-Dunk,  fondly,  foolishly,  aban- 
donedly,  there  would  have  been  no  little  Dinkie  and 
Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee.  They  would  have  been  left 
to  wander  like  disconsolate  little  ghosts  through  that 
lonely  and  twilit  No-Man's  Land  of  barren  love  and 
unwanted  babes.  And  the  only  thing  that  keeps  me 
human,  nowadays,  that  keeps  me  from  being  a  woman 
with  a  dead  soul,  a  she-being  of  untenanted  hide  and 
bones  and  dehydrated  ham-strings,  is  my  kiddies.  The 
thought  of  them,  at  any  time  of  the  day,  can  put  a 
cedilla  under  my  heart  to  soften  it.  .  .  . 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  291 

Struthers,  who  is  to  go  in  to  Buckhorn  with  the 
children  when  they  have  their  picture  taken,  is  already 
deep  in  elaborating  preparations  for  that  expedition. 
She  is  improvising  an  English  nurse's  uniform  and 
has  asked  if  there  might  be  one  picture  of  her  and 
the  children. 


Tuesday  the  Fifteenth 

THE  children  have  been  away  for  a  whole  da}',  the 
first  time  in  family  history.  And  oh,  what  a  difference 
it  makes  in  this  lonely  little  prairie  home  of  ours ! 
The  quietness,  the  emptiness,  the  desolation  of  it  all 
was  something  quite  beyond  my  imagination.  I  know 
now  that  I  could  never  live  apart  from  them.  What 
ever  happens,  I  shall  not  be  separated  from  my 
kiddies. 

I  spent  my  idle  time  in  getting  Peter's  music-box 
in  working  order.  Dinky-Dunk,  who  despises  it, 
thoughtlessly  sat  on  the  package  of  records  and  broke 
three  of  them.  I've  been  trying  over  the  others.  They 
sound  tinny  and  flat,  and  I'm  beginning  to  suspect  I 
haven't  my  sound-box  adjusted  right.  I've  a  hunger 
to  hear  good  music.  And  without  quite  knowing  it, 
I've  been  craving  for  city  life  again,  for  at  least  a 
taste  of  it,  for  even  a  chocolate  cream-soda  at  a  Huyler 
counter.  Dinky-Dunk  yesterday  said  that  I  was  a 
cloudy  creature,  and  accused  me  of  having  a  mutinous 
mouth.  Men  seem  to  think  that  love  should  be  like 
an  eight-day  clock,  with  a  moment  or  two  of  indus 
trious  winding-up  rewarded  by  a  long  week  of  undevi- 
ating  devotion. 

292 


Sunday  the  Twenty -seventn 

THE  thrashing  outfits  are  over  at  Casa  Grande,  and 
my  being  a  mere  spectator  of  the  big  and  busy  final 
act  of  the  season's  drama  reminds  me  of  three  years 
ago,  just  before  Dinkie  arrived.  Struthers,  however, 
is  at  Casa  Grande  and  in  her  glory,  the  one  and  only 
woman  in  a  circle  of  nine  active-bodied  men. 

I  begin  to  see  that  it's  true  what  Dinky-Dunk  said 
about  business  looming  bigger  in  men's  lives  than 
women  are  apt  to  remember.  He's  working  hard,  and 
his  neck's  so  thin  that  his  Adam's  apple  sticks  out 
like  a  push-button,  but  he  gets  his  reward  in  finding 
his  crop  running  much  higher  than  he  had  figured. 
He's  as  keen  as  ever  he  was  for  power  and  prosperity. 
He  wants  success,  and  night  and  day  he's  scheming 
for  it.  Sometimes  I  wonder  if  he  didn't  deliberately 
use  his  cousin  Allie  in  this  juggling  back  of  Casa 
Grande  into  his  own  hands.  Yet  Dinky-Dunk,  with 
all  his  faults,  is  not,  and  could  not  be,  circuitous.  I 
feel  sure  of  that. 

He  became  philosophical,  the  other  day  when  I  com 
plained  about  the  howling  of  the  coyotes,  and  pro 
tested  it  was  these  horizon-singers  that  kept  the  prai- 

293 


294 


rie  clean.  He  even  argued  that  the  flies  which  seem 
such  a  pest  to  the  cattle  in  summer-time  are  a  blessing 
in  disguise,  since  the  unmolested  animals  over-eat  when 
feed  is  plentiful  and  get  black-rot.  So  out  of  suffer 
ing  comes  wisdom  and  out  of  endurance  comes  forti 
tude! 


Thursday  the  Sixth 

ON  Tuesday  morning  we  had  our  first  snow  of  the 
season,  or,  rather,  before  the  season.  It  wasn't  much 
of  a  snow-storm,  but  Dinkie  was  greatly  worked  up 
at  the  sight  of  it  and  I  finally  put  on  his  little  reefer 
and  his  waders  and  let  him  go  out  in  it.  But  the 
weather  had  moderated,  the  snow  turned  to  slush,  and 
when  I  rescued  Dinkie  from  rolling  in  what  looked  to 
him  like  a  world  of  ice-cream  he  was  a  very  wet  boy. 

On  Tuesday  night  Dinkie,  usually  so  sturdy  and 
strong,  woke  up  with  a  tight  little  chest-cough  that 
rather  frightened  me.  I  went  over  to  his  crib  and 
covered  him  up.  But  when  he  wakened  me  again,  a 
couple  of  hours  later,  the  cough  had  grown  tighter. 
It  turned  into  a  sort  of  sharp  bark.  And  this  time 
I  found  Dinkie  hot  and  feverish.  So  I  got  busy,  rub 
bing  his  chest  with  sweet  oil  and  turpentine  until  the 
skin  was  pink  and  giving  him  a  sip  or  two  of  cherry 
pectoral  which  I  still  had  on  the  upper  shelf  of  the 
cupboard. 

When  morning  came  he  was  no  better.  He  seemed 
in  a  stupor,  rousing  only  to  bark  into  his  pillow.  I 
called  Dinky-Dunk  in,  before  he  left  in  the  pouring 

295 


296  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

rain  for  Casa  Grande,  and  he  said,  almost  indiffer 
ently,  "Yes,  the  boy's  got  a  cold  all  right."  But 
that  was  all. 

When  breakfast  was  over  I  tried  Dinkie  with  hot 
gruel,  but  he  declined  it.  He  refused  to  eat,  in  fact, 
and  remembering  what  Peter  had  once  said  about  rny 
first-born  being  pantophagous,  I  began  to  suspect 
that  I  had  a  very  sick  boy  on  my  hands. 

At  noon,  when  he  seemed  no  better,  I  made  a  mild 
mustard-plaster  and  put  it  on  the  upper  part  of  his 
little  chest.  I  let  it  burn  there  until  he  began  to  cry 
with  the  discomfort  of  it.  Then  I  tucked  a  double  fold 
of  soft  flannel  above  his  thorax. 

As  night  came  on  he  was  more  flushed  and  feverish 
than  ever,  and  I  wished  to  heaven  that  I'd  a  clinic 
thermometer  in  the  house.  For  by  this  time  I  was 
more  than  worried :  I  was  panicky.  Yet  Duncan,  when 
he  came  in,  and  got  out  of  his  oil-skins,  didn't  seem 
very  sympathetic.  He  flatly  refused  to  share  my 
fears.  The  child,  he  acknowledged,  had  a  croupy  lit 
tle  chest-cold,  but  all  he  wanted  was  keeping  warm  and 
as  much  water  as  he  could  drink.  Nature,  he  largely 
protested,  would  attend  to  a  case  like  that. 

I  was  ready  to  turn  on  him  like  a  she-tiger,  but  I 
held  myself  in,  though  it  took  an  effort.  I  saw 
Duncan  go  off  to  bed,  dog-tired,  of  course,  but  I  felt 
that  to  go  to  sleep,  under  the  circumstances,  would 
be  criminal.  Dinkie,  in  the  meantime,  was  waking 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  297 

every  now  and  then  and  barking  like  a  baby-coyote. 
I  could  have  stood  it,  I  suppose,  if  that  old  Bobs  of 
ours  hadn't  started  howling  outside,  in  long-drawn 
and  dreary  howls  of  unutterable  woe.  I  remembered 
about  a  dog  always  howling  that  way  when  somebody 
was  going  to  die  in  the  house.  And  I  concluded,  with 
an  icy  heart,  that  it  was  the  death-howl.  I  tried  to 
count  Dinkie's  pulse,  but  it  was  so  rapid  and  I  was  so 
nervous  that  I  lost  track  of  the  beats.  So  I  decided  to 
call  Dinky-Dunk. 

He  came  in  to  us  kind  of  sleepy-eyed  and  with  his 
hair  rumpled  up,  and  asked,  without  thinking,  what 
I  wanted. 

And  I  told  him,  with  a  somewhat  shaky  voice,  what 
I  wanted.  I  said  I  wanted  antiphlogistine,  and  a 
pneumonia-jacket,  and  a  doctor,  and  a  trained  nurse, 
and  just  a  few  of  the  comforts  of  civilization. 

Dinky-Dunk,  staring  at  me  as  though  I  were  a  mad 
woman,  went  over  to  Dinkie's  crib,  and  felt  his  fore 
head  and  the  back  of  his  neck,  and  held  an  ear  against 
the  boy's  chest,  and  then  against  his  shoulder-blades. 
He  said  it  was  all  right,  and  that  I  myself  ought  to 
be  in  bed.  As  though  in  answer  to  that  Dinkie  barked 
out  his  croupy  protest,  tight  and  hard,  barked  as  I'd 
never  heard  a  child  bark  before.  And  I  began  to  fuss, 
for  it  tore  my  heart  to  think  of  that  little  body  burn 
ing  up  with  fever  and  being  denied  its  breath. 

"You  might  just  as  well  get  back  to  bed,"  repeated 


298  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

Dinky-Dunk,  rather  impatiently.  And  that  was  the 
spark  which  set  off  the  mine,  which  pushed  me  clear 
over  the  edge  of  reason.  I'd  held  myself  in  for  so 
long,  during  weeks  and  weeks  of  placid-eyed  self- 
repression,  that  when  the  explosion  did  come  I  went 
off  like  a  Big  Bertha.  I  turned  on  my  husband  with 
a  red  light  dancing  before  my  face  and  told  him  he 
was  a  beast  and  a  heartless  brute.  He  tried  to  stop 
me,  but  it  was  no  use.  I  even  said  that  this  was  a  hell 
of  a  country,  where  a  white  woman  had  to  live  like 
a  Cree  squaw  and  a  child  had  to  die  like  a  sick  hound 
in  a  coulee.  And  I  said  a  number  of  other  things, 
which  must  have  cut  to  the  raw,  for  even  in  the  uncer 
tain  lamplight  I  could  see  that  Dinky-Dunk's  face 
had  become  a  kind  of  lemon-color,  which  is  the  nearest 
to  white  a  sunburned  man  seems  able  to  turn. 

"I'll  get  a  doctor,  if  you  want  one,"  he  said,  with 
an  ovcr-tricd-patience  look  in  his  eyes. 

"/  don't  want  a  doctor,"  I  told  him,  a  little  shrill- 
voiced  with  indignation.  "It's  the  child  who  wants 
one." 

"I'll  get  your  doctor,"  he  repeated  as  he  began 
dressing,  none  too  quickly.  And  it  took  him  an  inter 
minable  time  to  get  off,  for  it  was  raining  cats  and 
dogs,  a  cold,  sleety  rain  from  the  northeast,  and  the 
shafts  had  to  be  taken  off  the  buckboard  and  a  pole 
put  in,  for  it  would  require  a  team  to  haul  anything 
on  wheels  to  Buckhorn,  on  such  a  night. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  299 

It  occurred  to  me,  as  I  stood  at  the  window  and  saw 
Dinky-Dunk's  lantern  wavering  about  in  the  rain 
while  he  was  getting  the  team  and  hooking  them  on 
to  the  buckboard,  that  it  would  be  only  the  decent 
thing  to  send  him  off  with  a  cup  of  hot  coffee,  now 
that  I  had  the  kettle  boiling.  But  he'd  martyrize 
himself,  I  knew,  by  refusing  it,  even  though  I  made  it. 
And  he  was  already  sufficiently  warmed  by  the  fires 
of  martyrdom. 

Yet  it  was  an  awful  night,  I  realized  when  I  stood 
in  the  open  door  and  stared  after  him  as  he  swung 
out  into  the  muddy  trail  with  the  stable  lantern  lashed 
to  one  end  of  his  dashboard.  And  I  felt  sorry,  and  a 
little  guilty,  about  the  neglected  cup  of  coffee. 

I  went  back  to  little  Dinkie,  and  found  him  asleep. 
So  I  sat  down  beside  him.  I  sat  there  wrapped  up  in 
one  of  Dinky-Dunk's  four-point  Hudson-Bays,  decid 
ing  that  if  the  child's  cough  grew  tighter  I'd  rig  up 
a  croup-tent,  as  I'd  once  seen  Chinkie's  doctor  do  with 
little  Gimlets.  But  Dinkie  failed  to  waken.  And  I 
fell  asleep  myself,  and  didn't  open  an  eye  until  I  half- 
tumbled  out  of  the  chair,  well  on  toward  morning;. 

•  O 

By  the  time  Dinky-Dunk  got  back  with  the  doctor, 
who  most  unmistakably  smelt  of  Scotch  whisky,  I  had 
breakfast  over  and  the  house  in  order  and  the  Twins 
Ted  and  bathed  and  off  for  their  morning  nap.  I  had 
a  fresh  nightie  on  little  Dinkie,  who  rather  upset  me 
by  announcing  that  he  wanted  to  get  up  and  play  with 


300  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

his  Noah's  Ark,  for  his  fever  seemed  to  have  slipped 
away  from  him  and  the  tightness  had  gone  from  his 
cough.  But  I  said  nothing  as  that  red-faced  and 
sweet- :scented  doctor  looked  the  child  over.  His  stetho 
scope,  apparently,  tickled  Dinkie's  ribs,  for  after  try 
ing  to  wriggle  away  a  couple  of  times  he  laughed  out 
loud.  The  doctor  also  laughed.  But  Dinky-Dunk's 
eye  happened  to  meet  mine. 

It  would  be  hard  to  describe  his  expression.  All 
I  know  is  that  it  brought  a  disagreeable  little  sense 
of  shame  to  my  hypocritical  old  heart,  though  I 
wouldn't  have  acknowledged  it,  for  worlds. 

"Why,  those  lungs  are  clear,"  I  heard  the  man  of 
medicine  saying  to  my  husband.  "It's  been  a  nasty 
little  cold,  of  course,  but  nothing  to  worry  over." 

His  optimism  struck  me  as  being  rather  unpro 
fessional,  for  if  you  travel  half  a  night  to  a  case,  it 
seems  to  me,  it  ought  not  to  be  brushed  aside  with  a 
laugh.  And  I  was  rather  sorry  that  I  had  such  a 
good  breakfast  waiting  for  them.  Duncan,  it's  true, 
did  not  eat  a  great  deal,  but  the  way  that  red-faced 
doctor  lapped  up  my  coffee  with  clotted  cream  and 
devoured  bacon  and  eggs  and  hot  muffins  should  have 
disturbed  any  man  with  an  elementary  knowledge  of 
dietetics.  And  by  noon  Dinkie  was  pretty  much  his 
old  self  again.  I  half  expected  that  Duncan  would 
rub  it  in  a  little.  But  he  has  remained  discreetly 
silent. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  301 

Next  time,  of  course,  I'll  have  a  better  idea  of  what 
to  do.  But  I've  been  thinking  that  this  exquisite  and 
beautiful  animalism  known  as  the  maternal  instinct 
can  sometimes  emerge  from  its  exquisiteness.  Chil 
dren  are  a  joy  and  a  glory,  but  you  pay  for  that  joy 
and  glory  when  you  see  them  stretched  out  on  a  bed 
of  pain,  with  the  shadow  of  Death  hovering  over  them. 

When  I  tried    to    express    something    like    this  to 
Dunkie  last  night,  somewhat  apologetically,  he  looked 
at  me  with  an  odd  light  in  his  somber  old  Scotch 
Canadian  eye. 

"Wait  until  you  see  him  really  ill,"  he  remarked, 
man-like,  stubbornly  intent  on  justifying  himself. 
But  I  was  too  busy  saying  a  little  prayer,  demand 
ing  of  Heaven  that  such  a  day  might  never  come,  to 
bother  about  delivering  myself  of  the  many  labori 
ously  concocted  truths  which  I'd  assembled  for  my 
bone-headed  lord  and  master.  I  was  grateful  enough 
for  things  as  they  were,  and  I  could  afford  to  be 
generous. 


Sunday  the  Ninth 

FOR  the  first  time  since  I  came  out  on  the  prairio, 
I  dread  the  thought  of  winter.  Yet  it's  real'ly  some 
thing  more  than  the  winter  I  dread,  since  snow  and 
cold  have  no  terrors  for  me.  I  need  only  to  look  back 
about  ten  short  months  and  think  of  those  crystal- 
clear  winter  days  of  ours,  with  the  sleigh  piled  up 
with  its  warm  bear-robes,  the  low  sun  on  the  endless 
sea  of  white,  the  air  like  champagne,  the  spanking 
team  frosted  with  their  own  breath,  the  caroling 
sleigh-bells,  and  the  man  who  still  meant  so  much  to 
me  at  my  side.  Then  the  homeward  drive  at  night, 
under  violet  clear  skies,  over  drifts  of  diamond-dust, 
to  the  warmth  and  peace  and  coziness  of  one's  own 
hearth !  It  was  often  razor-edge  weather,  away  below 
zero,  but  we  had  furs  enough  to  defy  any  threat  of 
frost-nip. 

We  still  have  the  furs,  it's  true,  but  there's  the 
promise  of  a  different  kind  of  frost  in  the  air  now,  a 
black  frost  that  creeps  into  the  heart  which  no  furs 
can  keep  warm.  ... 

We  still  have  the  furs,  as  I've  already  said,  and 
I've  been  looking  them  over.  They're  so  plentiful 

302 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  303 

in  this  country  tnat  I've  rather  lost  my  respect 
for  them.  Back  in  the  old  days  I  used  to  invade 
those  mirrored  and  carpeted  salons  where  a  trained 
and  deferential  saleswoman  would  slip  sleazy  and 
satin-lined  moleskin  coats  over  my  arms  and  adjust 
baby-bear  and  otter  and  ermine  and  Hudson- 
seal  next  to  my  skin.  It  always  gave  me  a  very 
luxurious  and  Empressy  sort  of  feeling  to  see 
myself  arrayed,  if  only  experimentally,  in  silver- 
fox  and  plucked  beaver  and  fisher,  to  feel  the  soft 
pelts  and  observe  how  well  one's  skin  looked  above 
seal-brown  or  shaggy  bear. 

But  I  never  knew  what  it  cost.  I  never  even  con 
sidered  where  they  came  from,  or  what  they  grew  on, 
and  it  was  to  me  merely  a  vague  and  unconfirmed 
legend  that  they  were  all  torn  from  the  carcasses  of 
far-away  animals.  Prairie  life  has  brought  me  a  lit 
tle  closer  to  that  legend,  and  now  that  I  know  what  I 
do,  it  makes  a  difference. 

For  with  the  coming  of  the  cold  weather,  last  win 
ter,  Francois  and  Whinstane  Sandy  took  to  trapping, 
to  fill  in  the  farm-work  hiatus.  They  made  it  a  cam 
paign,  and  prepared  for  it  carefully,  concocting 
stretching-rings  and  cutting-boards  and  fashioning 
rabbit-snares  and  overhauling  wicked-looking  iron 
traps,  which  were  quite  ugly  enough  even  before  they 
became  stained  and  clotted  and  rusted  with  blood. 

They  had  a  very  successful  season,  but  even  at  the 


804  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

first  it  struck  me  as  odd  to  see  two  men,  not  outwardly 
debased,  so  soberly  intent  on  their  game  of  killing. 
And  in  the  end  I  got  sick  of  the  big  blood-rusted  traps 
and  the  stretching-rings  and  the  blood-smeared  cut 
ting-boards  and  the  smell  of  pelts  being  cured.  For 
every  pelt,  I  began  to  see,  meant  pain  and  death.  In 
one  trap  Francois  found  only  the  foot  of  a  young 
red  fox:  it  had  gnawed  its  leg  off  to  gain  freedom 
from  those  vicious  iron  jaws  that  had  bitten  so  sud 
denly  into  its  flesh  and  bone  and  sinew.  He  also  told 
me  of  finding  a  young  bear  which  had  broken  the 
anchor-chain  of  a  twelve-pound  trap  and  dragged  it 
over  one  hundred  miles.  All  the  fight,  naturally,  was 
gone  out  of  the  little  creature.  It  was  whimpering 
like  a  woman  when  Francois  came  up  with  it — poor 
little  tortured  broken-hearted  thing!  And  some 
empty-headed  heiress  goes  mincing  into  the  Metro 
politan,  on  a  Caruso  night,  very  proud  and  peacocky 
over  her  new  ermine  coat,  without  ever  dreaming  it's  a 
patchwork  of  animal  sufferings  that  is  keeping  her 
fat  body  warm,  and  that  she's  trying  to  make  herself 
beautiful  in  a  hundred  tragedies  of  the  wild. 

If  women  only  thought  of  these  things !  But  we 
women  have  a  very  convenient  hand-made  imagination 
all  our  own,  and  what  upsets  us  as  perfect  ladies  we 
graciously  avoid.  Yet  if  the  petticoated  Vandal  in 
that  ermine  coat  were  compelled  to  behold  from  her 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  305 

box-chair  in  the  Metropolitan,  not  a  musty  old  love- 
affair  set  to  music,  but  the  spectacle  of  how  each  little 
animal  whose  skin  she  has  appropriated  had  been  made 
to  suffer,  the  hours  and  sometimes  days  of  torture  it 
had  endured,  and  how,  if  still  alive  when  the  trapper 
made  the  rounds  of  his  sets,  it  had  been  carefully 
strangled  to  death  by  that  frugal  harvester,  to  the 
end  that  the  pelt  might  not  be  bloodied  and  reckoned 
only  as  a  "second" — if  the  weasel-decked  lady,  I 
repeat,  had  to  witness  all  this  with  her  own  beaded 
eyes,  our  wilderness  would  not  be  growing  into  quite 
such  a  lonely  wilderness. 

Or  some  day,  let's  put  it,  as  one  of  these  beaver- 
clad  ladies  tripped  through  the  Ramble  in  Central 
Park,  supposing  a  steel-toothed  trap  suddenly  and 
quite  unexpectedly  snapped  shut  on  her  silk-stock 
inged  ankle  and  she  writhed  and  moaned  there  in 
public,  over  the  week-end.  Then  possibly  her  cries 
of  suffering  might  make  her  sisters  see  a  little  more 
light.  But  the  beaver,  they  tell  me,  is  trapped  under 
the  ice,  always  in  running  water.  A  mud-ball  is  placed 
a  little  above  the  waiting  trap,  to  leave  the  water 
opaque,  and  when  the  angry  iron  jaws  have  snapped 
shut  on  their  victim,  that  victim  drowns,  a  prisoner. 
Francois  used  to  contend  shruggingly  that  it  was  an 
easy  death.  It  may  be  easy  compared  with  some  of 
the  other  deaths  imposed  on  his  furry  captives.  But 


306  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

it's  not  my  idea  of  bliss,  drowning  under  a  foot  or  two 
of  ice  with  a  steel  trap  mangling  your  ankle  for  full 
measure ! 

"We  live  forward,  but  we  understand  backward." 
I  don't  know  who  first  said  it.  But  the  older  I  grow 
the  more  I  realize  how  true  it  is. 


Sunday  the  Umptietfi 

I'VE  written  to  Peter,  reminding  him  of  his  promise, 
and  asking  about  the  Pasadena  bungalow. 

It  seems  the  one  way  out.  I'm  tired  of  living  like 
an  Alpine  ibex,  all  day  long  above  the  snow-line.  I'm 
tired  of  this  blind  alley  of  inaction.  I'm  tired  of 
decisions  deferred  and  threats  evaded.  I  want  to  get 
away  to  think  things  over,  to  step  back  and  regain  a 
perspective  on  the  over-smudged  canvas  of  life. 

To  remain  at  Alabama  Ranch  during  the  winter  can 
mean  only  a  winter  of  discontent  and  drifting — and 
drifting  closer  and  closer  to  uncharted  rocky  ledges. 
There's  no  ease  for  the  mouth  where  one  tooth  aches, 
as  the  Chinese  say. 

Dinky-Dunk,  I  think,  has  an  inkling  of  how  I  feel. 
He  is  very  thoughtful  and  kind  in  small  things,  and 
sometimes  looks  at  me  with  the  eyes  of  a  boy's  dog 
which  has  been  forbidden  to  follow  the  village  gang 
a-field.  And  it's  not  that  I  dislike  him,  or  that  he 
grates  on  me,  or  that  I'm  not  thankful  enough  for 
the  thousand  and  one  little  kind  things  he  does.  But 
it's  rubbing  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  glass.  It  can't 
bring  back  the  past.  My  husband  of  to-day  is  not 

307 


308  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

the  Dinky-Dunk  I  once  knew  and  loved  and  laughed 
with.  To  go  back  to  dogs,  it  reminds  me  of  Chinkie's 
St.  Bernard,  "Father  Tom,"  whom  Chinkie  petted  and 
trained  and  loved  almost  to  adoration.  And  when  poor 
old  Father  Tom  was  killed  Chinkie  in  his  madness 
insisted  that  a  taxidermist  should  stuff  and  mount  that 
dead  dog,  which  stood,  thereafter,  not  a  quick  and  liv 
ing  companion  but  a  rather  gruesome  monument  of  a 
vanished  friendship.  It  was,  of  course,  the  shape  and 
color  of  the  thing  he  had  once  loved;  but  you  can't 
feed  a  hungry  heart  by  staring  at  a  pair  of  glass  eyes 
and  a  wired  tail  without  any  wajr  in  it. 


Saturday  the  Ninth 

STRUTHERS  and  I  have  been  busy  making  clothes, 
during  the  absence  of  Dinky-Dunk,  who  has  been  off 
duck-shooting  for  the  last  three  days.  He  complained 
of  being  a  bit  tuckered  out  and  having  stood  the  gaff 
too  long  and  needing  a  change.  The  outing  will  do 
him  good.  The  children  miss  him,  of  course,  but  he's 
promised  to  bring  Dinkie  home  an  Indian  bow- 
and-arrow.  I  can  see  death  and  destruction  hanging 
over  the  glassware  of  this  household.  .  .  .  The 
weather  has  been  stormy,  and  yesterday  Whinnie  and 
Struthers  put  up  the  stove  in  the  bunk-house.  They 
were  a  long  time  about  it,  but  I  was  reluctant  to  stop 
the  flutterings  of  Cupid's  wings. 


309 


Tuesday  the  Twelfth 

I  HAD  a  brief  message  from  Peter  stating  the  Pasa 
dena  house  is  entirely  at  my  disposal.  .  .  .  Dinky- 
Dunk  came  back  with  a  real  pot-hunter's  harvest  of 
wild  ducks,  which  we'll  pick  and  dress  and  freeze  for 
winter  use.  I'm  taking  the  breast-feathers  for  my 
pillows  and  Whinstane  Sandy  is  taking  what's  left 
for  a  sleeping-bag — from  which  I  am  led  to  infer 
that  he's  still  reconciled  to  a  winter  of  solitude. 
Struthers,  I  know,  could  tell  him  of  a  warmer  bag  than 
that,  lined  with  downier  feathers  from  the  pinions  of 
Eros.  But,  as  I've  said  before,  Fate,  being  blind, 
weaves  badly. 


310 


Friday  the  Fifteenth 

I'VE  just  told  Dinky-Dunk  of  my  decision  to  take 
the  kiddies  to  California  for  the  winter  months.  He 
rather  surprised  me  by  agreeing  with  everything  I 
suggested.  He  feels,  I  think,  as  I  do,  that  there's 
danger  in  going  aimlessly  on  and  on  as  we  have  been 
doing.  And  it's  really  a  commonplace  for  the  prairie 
rancher — when  he  can  afford  it — to  slip  down  to  Cali 
fornia  for  the  winter.  They  go  by  the  thousand,  by 
the  train-load. 


Friday  the  Sixth 

IT'S  three  long  weeks  since  I've  had  time  for  either 
ink  or  retrospect.  But  at  last  I'm  settled,  though  I 
feel  as  though  I'd  died  and  ascended  into  Heaven,  or 
at  least  changed  my  world,  as  the  Chinks  say,  so  dif 
ferent  is  Pasadena  to  the  prairie  and  Alabama  Ranch. 
For  as  I  sit  here  on  the  loggia  of  Peter's  house  I'm 
bathed  in  a  soft  breeze  that  is  heavy  with  a  fragrance 
of  flowers,  the  air  is  the  air  of  our  balmiest  midsum 
mer,  and  in  a  pepper-tree  not  thirty  feet  away  a 
mocking-bird  is  singing  for  all  it's  "worth.  It  seems 
a  poignantly  beautiful  world.  And  everything  sug 
gests  peace.  But  it  was  not  an  easy  peace  to  attain. 

In  the  first  place,  the  trip  down  was  rather  a  night 
mare.  It  brought  home  to  me  the  fact  that  I  had  three 
young  barbarians  to  break  and  subjugate,  three  un 
trained  young  outlaws  who  went  wild  with  their  first 
plunge  into  train-travel  and  united  in  defiance  of 
Struthers  and  her  foolishly  impressive  English  uni 
form  which  always  makes  me  think  of  Regent  Park. 
I  have  a  suspicion  that  Dinky-Dunk  all  the  while  knew 
of  the  time  I'd  have,  but  sagely  held  his  peace. 

I  had  intended,  when  I  left  home,  to  take  the  boat 

312 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  313 

at  Victoria  and  go  down  to  San  Pedro,  for  I  was 
hungry  for  salt  water  and  the  feel  of  a  rolling  deck 
under  my  feet  again.  But  the  antics  of  my  three 
little  outlaws  persuaded  me,  before  we  pulled  into  Cal 
gary,  that  it  would  be  as  well  to  make  the  trip  south 
as  short  a  one  as  possible.  Dinkie  disgraced  me  in  the 
dining-car  by  insisting  on  "drinking"  his  mashed 
potatoes,  and  made  daily  and  not  always  ineffectual 
efforts  to  appropriate  all  the  fruit  on  the  table,  and 
on  the  last  day,  when  I'd  sagaciously  handed  him  over 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  Struthers,  I  overheard  this 
dialogue : 

"I  want  shooder  in  my  soup !" 

"But  little  boys  don't  eat  sugar  in  their  soup." 

"I  want  shooder  in  my  soup!" 

"But,  darling,  mommie  doesn't  eat  sugar  in  her 
soup !" 

"Shooder!  Dinkie  wants  shooder,  shooder  in  his 
soup !" 

"Daddy  never  eats  shooder  in  his  soup,  Sweetness." 

"I  want  shooder !" 

"But  really  nice  little  boys  don't  ask  for  sugar  in 
their  soup,"  argued  the  patient-eyed  Struthers. 

"Shooder!"  insisted  the  implacable  tyrant.  And  he 
got  it. 

There  was  an  exceptional  number  of  babies  and 
small  children  on  board  and  my  unfraternal  little 
prairie-waifs  did  not  see  why  every  rattle  and  doll  and 


314  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

automatic  toy  of  their  little  fellow  travelers  and  sis 
ter  tourists  shouldn't  promptly  become  their  own  pri 
vate  property.  And  traveling  with  twins  not  yet  a 
year  old  is  scarcely  conducive  to  rest. 

And  yet,  for  all  the  worry  and  tumult,  I  found  a 
new  peace  creeping  into  my  soul.  It  was  the  first  sight 
of  the  Rockies,  I  think,  which  brought  the  change. 
I'd  grown  tired  of  living  on  a  billiard-table,  without 
quite  knowing  it,  tired  of  the  trimly  circumscribed 
monotony  of  material  life,  of  the  isolating  flat  conten 
tion  against  hunger  and  want.  But  the  mountains 
took  me  out  of  myself.  They  were  Peter's  windmill, 
raised  to  the  Nth  power.  They  loomed  above  me, 
seeming  to  say :  "We  are  timeless.  You,  puny  one,  can 
live  but  a  day."  They  stood  there  as  they  had  stood 
from  the  moment  God  first  whispered:  "Let  there  be 
light" — and  there  was  light.  But  no,  I'm  wrong 
there,  as  Peter  would  very  promptly  have  told  me,  for 
it  was  only  in  the  Cambrian  Period  that  the  corner 
stone  of  the  Rockies  was  laid.  The  geologic  clock 
ticked  out  its  centuries  until  the  swamps  of  the  Coal 
Period  were  full  of  Peter's  Oldest  Inhabitants  in  the 
form  of  Dinosaurs  and  then  came  the  Cretaceous  Pe 
riod  and  the  Great  Architect  looked  down  and  bade 
the  Rockies  arise,  and  tooled  them  into  beauty  with 
His  blue-green  glaciers  and  His  singing  rivers,  and 
touched  the  lordliest  peaks  with  wine-glow  and  filled 
the  azure  valleys  with  music  and  peace.  And  we 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  315 

threaded  along  those  valley-sides  on  our  little  ribbons 
of  steel,  skirted  the  shouting  rivers  and  plunged  into 
tiny  twisted  tubes  of  darkness,  emerging  again  into 
the  light  and  once  more  hearing  the  timeless  giants, 
with  their  snow-white  heads  against  the  sunset,  repeat 
their  whisper :  "We  live  and  are  eternal.  Ye,  who  fret 
about  our  feet,  dream  for  a  day,  and  are  forgotten !" 
But  we  seemed  to  be  stepping  out  into  a  new  world, 
by  the  time  we  got  to  Pasadena.  It  was  a  summery 
and  flowery  and  holiday  world,  and  it  impressed  me  as 
being  solely  and  scrupulously  organized  for  pleasure. 
Yet  all  minor  surprises  were  submerged  in  the  biggest 
surprise  of  Peter's  bungalow,  which  is  really  more 
like  a  chateau,  and  strikes  me  as  being  singularly  like 
Peter  himself,  not  amazingly  impressive  to  look  at, 
perhaps,  but  hiding  from  the  world  a  startingly  rich 
and  luxurious  interior.  The  house  itself,  half  hidden 
in  shrubbery,  is  of  weather-stained  stucco,  and  looks 
at  first  sight  a  little  gloomy,  with  the  patina,  of  time 
upon  it.  But  it  is  a  restful  change  from  the  spick- 
and-spanness  of  the  near-by  millionaire  colony,  so  elo 
quent  of  the  paint-brush  and  the  lawn-valet's  shears, 
so  smug  and  new  and  strident  in  its  paraded  opulence. 
Peter's  gardens,  in  fact,  are  a  rather  careless  riot  of 
color  and  line,  a  sort  of  achieved  genteel  roughness, 
like  certain  phases  of  his  house,  as  though  the  wave  of 
refinement  driven  too  high  had  broken  and  tumbled 
over  on  itself. 


316  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

The  house,  which  is  the  shape  of  an  "E"  without 
the  middle  stroke,  has  a  green-sodded  patio  between 
the  two  wings,  with  a  small  fountain  and  a  stained 
marble  basin  at  the  center.  There  are  shade-trees  and 
date-palms  and  shrubs  and  Romanesque-looking  stone 
seats  about  narrow  walks,  for  this  is  the  only  really 
formalized  portion  of  the  entire  property.  This  leads 
off  into  a  grove  and  garden,  a  confusion  of  flowers  and 
trees  where  I've  already  been  able  to  spot  out  a  num 
ber  of  orange  trees,  some  of  them  well  fruited,  several 
lemon  and  fig  trees,  a  row  of  banana  trees,  or  plants, 
whichever  they  should  be  called,  besides  pepper  and 
palm  and  acacia  and  a  long-legged  double-file  of  euca 
lyptus  at  the  rear.  And  in  between  is  a  pergola  and 
a  mixture  of  mimosa  and  wistaria  and  tamarisk  and 
poppies  and  trcllised  roses  and  one  woody  old  gera 
nium  with  a  stalk  like  a  crab-apple  trunk  and  growth 
enough  to  cover  half  a  dozen  prairie  hay-stacks. 

But,  as  I've  already  implied,  it  was  the  inside  of 
the  house  that  astonished  me.  It  is  much  bigger  than 
it  looks  and  is  crowded  with  the  most  gorgeous  old 
things  in  copper  and  brass  and  leather  and  mahogany 
that  I  ever  saw  under  one  roof.  It  has  three  open 
fireplaces,  a  huge  one  of  stone  in  the  huge  living-room, 
and  rough-beamed  ceilings  of  redwood,  and  Spanish 
tiled  floors,  and  chairs  upholstered  with  cowhide  with 
the  ranch-brand  still  showing  in  the  tanned  leather, 
and  tables  of  Mexican  mahogany  set  in  redwood 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  317 

frames,  and  several  convenient  little  electric  heaters 
which  can  be  carried  from  room  to  room  as  they  are 
needed. 

Pinshaw,  Peter's  gardener  and  care-taker,  had 
before  our  arrival  picked  several  clumps  of  violets, 
with  perfume  like  the  English  violets,  and  the  house 
was  aired  and  everything  waiting  and  ready  when  we 
came,  even  to  two  bottles  of  certified  milk  in  the  ice 
box  for  the  babies  and  half  a  dozen  Casaba  melons  for 
their  elders.  My  one  disturbing  thought  is  that  it 
will  be  a  hard  house  to  live  up  to.  But  Struthers, 
who  is  not  untouched  with  her  folie  de  grandeur,  has 
the  slightly  flurried  satisfaction  of  an  exile  who  has  at 
last  come  into  her  own.  One  of  the  first  things  I 
must  do,  however,  is  to  teach  my  kiddies  to  respect 
Peter's  belongings.  In  one  cabinet  of  books,  which 
is  locked,  I  have  noticed  several  which  are  by  "Peter 
Ketlcy"  himself.  Yet  that  name  meant  nothing  to  me, 
when  I  met  it  out  on  the  prairie  and  humiliated  its 
owner  by  converting  him  into  one  of  my  hired  hands. 
Ce  monde  est  plein  de  fous. 


Monday  the  Sixteenth 

THIS  is  a  great  climate  for  meditation.  And  I  have 
been  meditating.  Back  at  Alabama  Ranch,  I  suppose, 
there's  twenty  degrees  of  frost  and  a  northwest  wind 
like  a  search-warrant.  Kere  there's  a  pellucid  blue 
sky,  just  enough  breeze  to  rustle  the  bamboo-fronds 
behind  me,  and  a  tall  girl  in  white  lawn,  holding  a  pale 
green  parasol  over  her  head  and  meandering  slowly 
along  the  sun-steeped  boulevard,  which  smells  of 
hot  tar. 

I've  been  sitting  here  staring  down  that  boulevard, 
v  with  the  strong  light  making  me  squint  a  little.  I've 
been  watching  the  two  rows  of  date-palms  along  the 
curb,  with  their  willow-plume  head-dress  stirring  lazily 
in  the  morning  breeze.  Well  back  from  the  smooth 
and  shining  asphalt,  as  polished  as  ebony  with  its  oil- 
drip  and  tire-wear,  is  a  row  of  houses,  some  shingled 
and  awninged,  some  Colonial-Spanish,  and  stuccoed 
and  bone-white  in  the  sun,  some  dark-wooded  and  vine- 
draped  and  rose-grown,  but  all  immaculate  and  fin 
ished  and  opulent.  The  street  is  very  quiet,  but  half 
way  down  the  block  I  can  see  a  Jap  gardener  in  brown 
denim  sedately  watering  a  well-barbcred  terrace.  Still 

318 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  319 

farther  away,  somebody,  in  one  of  the  deep-shadowed 
porches,  is  tinkling  a  ukelele,  and  somebody  that  I 
can't  see  is  somewhere  beating  a  rug.  I  can  see  a  little 
rivulet  of  water  that  flows  sparkling  down  the 
asphalted  runnel  of  the  curb.  Then  the  clump  of 
bamboos  back  by  Peter's  bedroom  window  rustles 
crisply  again  and  is  quiet  and  the  silence  is  broken  by 
a  nurse-maid  calling  to  a  child  sitting  in  a  toy  motor- 
wagon.  Then  a  touring-car  purrs  past,  with  the  sun 
flashing  on  its  polished  metal  equipment,  and  the  toy 
motor  child  being  led  reluctantly  homeward  by  the 
maid  cries  shrilly,  and  in  the  silence  that  ensues  I  can 
hear  the  faint  hiss  of  a  spray-nozzle  that  builds  a 
transient  small  rainbow  just  beyond  the  trellis  of 
Cherokee  roses  from  which  a  languid  white  petal  falls, 
from  time  to  time. 

It's  a  dolce-far-nlente  day,  as  all  the  days  seem  to 
be  here,  and  the  best  that  I  can  do  is  sit  and  brood  like 
a  Plymouth  Rock  with  a  full  crop.  But  I've  been 
thinking  things  over.  And  I've  come  to  several  con 
clusions. 

One  is  that  I'm  not  so  contented  as  I  thought  I  was 
going  to  be.  I  am  oppressed  by  a  shadowy  feeling  of 
in  some  way  sailing  under  false  colors.  I  am  also 
hounded  by  an  equally  shadowy  impression  that  I'm 
a  convalescent.  Yet  I  find  myself  vulgarly  healthy, 
my  kiddies  have  all  acquired  a  fine  coat  of  tan,  and 
only  Struthers  is  slightly  off  her  feed,  having  acquired 


320  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

a  not  unmerited  attack  of  cholera  morbus  from  over 
indulgence  in  Casaba  melon.  But  I  keep  wondering  if 
Dinky-Dunk  is  getting  the  right  sort  of  things  to  eat, 
if  he's  lonely,  and  what  he  does  in  his  spare  time. 

And  another  conclusion  I've  come  to  is  that  men, 
much  as  I  hate  to  admit  it,  are  built  of  a  stronger 
fiber  than  women.  They  seem  able  to  stand  shock 
better  than  the  weaker  sex.  They  are  not  so  apt  to 
go  down  under  defeat,  to  take  the  full  count,  as  I 
have  done.  For  I  still  have  to  face  the  fact  that  I 
was  a  failure.  Then  I  turned  tail  and  fled  from  the 
scene  of  my  collapse.  That  flight,  it  is  true,  has 
brought  me  a  certain  brand  of  peace,  but  it  is  not  an 
enduring  peace,  for  you  can't  run  away  from  what's 
in  your  own  heart.  And  already  I'm  restless  and  ill- 
at-ease.  It's  not  so  much  that  I'm  dissatisfied;  it's 
more  that  I'm  unsatisfied.  There  still  seems  to  be 
something  momentous  left  out  of  the  plan  of  things. 
I  have  the  teasing  feeling  of  confronting  something 
which  is  still  impending,  which  is  being  withheld, 
which  I  can  not  reach  out  for,  no  matter  how  I  try, 
until  the  time  is  ripe.  .  .  .  Those  rustling  bam 
boos  so  close  to  the  room  where  I  sleep  have  begun 
to  bother  me  so  much  that  I'm  migrating  to  a  new 
bedroom  to-night.  "There's  never  anything  without 
something !" 


Tuesday  the  Twenty-fourth 

LITTLE  Dinky-Dunk  has  adventured  into  illicit 
knowledge  of  his  first  orange  from  the  bough.  It  was 
one  of  Peter's  low-hanging  Valencias,  and  seems  to 
have  left  no  ill-effects,  though  I  prefer  that  all  inside 
matter  be  carefully  edited  before  consumption  by  that 
small  Red.  So  Struthers  hereafter  must  stand  the 
angel  with  the  flaming  sword  and  guard  the  gates  that 
open  upon  that  tree  of  forbidden  fruit.  Her  own 
colic,  by  the  way,  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  at  pres 
ent  she's  extremely  interested  in  Pinshaw,  who,  she 
tells  me,  was  once  a  cabinet-maker  in  England,  and 
came  out  to  California  for  his  health.  Struthers,  as 
usual,  is  attempting  to  reach  the  heart  of  her  new  vic 
tim  by  way  of  the  stomach,  and  Pinshaw,  apparently, 
is  not  unappreciative,  since  he  appears  a  little  more 
punctually  at  his  watering  and  raking  and  gardening 
and  has  his  ears  up  like  a  rabbit  for  the  first  inkling 
of  his  lady-love's  matutinal  hand-out.  And  poor  old 
Whinstane  Sandy,  back  at  Alabama  Ranch,  is  still 
making  sheep's  eyes  at  the  patches  which  Struthers 
once  sewed  on  his  breeks,  like  as  not,  and  staring  with 
a  moonish  smile  at  the  atrabilious  photograph  which 

321 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


the  one  camera-artist  of  Buckhorn  made  of  Struthers 
and  my  three  pop-eyed  kiddies. 

These  are,  without  exception,  the  friendliest  people 
I  have  ever  known.  The  old  millionaire  lumberman 
from  Bay  City,  who  lives  next  door  to  me,  pushes 
through  the  hedge  with  platefuls  of  green  figs  and 
tid-bits  from  his  gardens,  and  delightful  girls  whose 
names  I  don't  even  know  come  in  big  cars  and  ask  to 
take  little  Dinkie  off  for  one  of  their  lawn  fetes.  It 
even  happened  that  a  movie-actor  —  who,  I  later  dis 
covered,  was  a  drug-addict  —  insisted  on  accompany 
ing  me  home  and  informed  me  on  the  way  that  I  had 
a  dream  of  a  face  for  camera-work.  It  quite  set  me 
up,  for  all  its  impertinence,  until  I  learned  to  my  sor 
row  that  it  had  flowered  out  of  nothing  more  than  an 
extra  shot  in  the  arm. 

They  are  a  friendly  and  companionable  folk,  and 
they'd  keep  me  on  the  go  all  the  time  if  I'd  let  'em, 
But  I've  only  had  energy  enough  to  run  over  to  Los 
Angeles  twice,  though  there  are  a  dozen  or  two  people 
I  must  look  up  in  that  more  frolicsome  suburb.  But 
I  can't  get  away  from  the  feeling,  the  truly  rural  feel 
ing,  that  I'm  among  strangers.  I  can't  rid  myself  of 
the  extremely  parochial  impression  that  these  people 
are  not  my  people.  And  there's  a  valetudinarian 
aspect  to  the  place  which  I  find  slightly  depressing. 
For  this  seems  to  be  the  one  particular  point  where 
the  worn-out  old  money-maker  comes  to  die,  and  the 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  323 

antique  ladies  with  asthma  struggle  for  an  extra  year 
or  two  of  the  veranda  rocking-chair,  and  rickety  old 
beaux  sit  about  in  Panamas  and  white  flannels  and 
listen  to  the  hardening  of  their  arteries.  And  I 
haven't  quite  finished  with  life  yet — not  if  I  know  it— 
not  by  a  long  shot ! 

But  one  has  to  be  educated  for  idleness,  I  find, 
almost  as  much  as  for  industry.  I  knew  the  trick 
once,  but  I've  lost  the  hang  of  it.  The  one  thing  that 
impresses  me,  on  coming  straight  from  prairie  life 
to  a  city  like  this,  is  how  much  women-folk  can  have 
done  for  them  without  quite  knowing  it.  The  machin 
ery  of  life  here  is  so  intricate  and  yet  so  adequate  that 
it  denudes  them  of  all  the  normal  and  primitive  activi 
ties  of  their  grandmothers,  so  they  have  to  invent 
troubles  and  contrive  quite  unnecessary  activities  to 
keep  from  being  bored  to  extinction.  Everything 
seems  to  come  to  them  ready-made  and  duly  pre 
pared,  their  bread,  their  light  and  fuel  and  water,  their 
meat  and  milk.  All  that,  and  the  daily  drudgery  it 
implies,  is  made  ready  and  performed  beyond  their 
vision,  and  they  have  no  balky  pumps  to  prime  and  no 
fires  to  build,  and  they'd  probably  be  quite  disturbed 
to  think  that  their  roasts  came  from  a  slaughter-house 
with  bloody  floors  and  that  their  breakfast  rolls,  in 
stead  of  coming  ready-made  into  the  world,  are  mixed 
and  molded  in  bake-rooms  where  men  work  sweating 
by  night,  stripped  to  the  waist,  like  stokers. 


DINKY-DUNK'S  letter,  which  reached  me  Monday, 
was  very  short  and  almost  curt.  It  depressed  me  for 
a  day.  I  tried  to  fight  against  that  feeling,  when  it 
threatened  to  return  yesterday,  and  was  at  Peter's 
piano  shouting  to  the  kiddies: 

"Coon,  Coon,  Coon,  I  wish  my  coTor'd  fade ! 
Coon,  Coon,  Coon,  I'd  like  a  different  shade  !" 

when  Struthers  carried  in  to  me,  with  a  sort  of  tri 
umphant  and  tight-lipped  I-told-you-so  air,  a  copy  of 
the  morning's  Los  Angeles  Examiner.  She  had  it 
folded  so  that  I  found  myself  confronting  a  picture 
of  Lady  Alicia  Newland,  Lady  Alicia  in  the  "Teddy- 
Bear"  suit  of  an  aviator,  with  a  fur-lined  leather 
jacket  and  helmet  and  heavy  gauntlets  and  leggings 
and  the  same  old  audacious  look  out  of  the  quietly 
smiling  eyes,  which  were  squinting  a  little  because  of 
the  sunlight. 

Lady  Allie,  I  found  on  perusing  the  letter-press, 
had  been  flying  with  some  of  the  North  Island  officers 
down  in  San  Diego  Bay.  And  now  she  and  the  Right 
Honorable  Lieutenant-Colonel  Brereton  Ainsley- 

324 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  325 

Brook,  of  the  British  Imperial  Commission  to  Canada, 
were  to  attempt  a  flight  to  Kelly  Field  Number  Two, 
at  San  Antonio,  in  Texas,  in  a  De  Haviland  machine. 
She  had  told  the  Examiner  reporter  who  had  caught 
her  as  she  stood  beside  a  naval  sea-plane,  that  she 
"loved"  flying  and  loved  taking  a  chance  and  that  her 
worst  trouble  was  with  nose-bleed,  which  she'd  get 
over  in  time,  she  felt  sure.  And  if  the  Texas  flight 
was  a  success  she  would  try  to  arrange  for  a  flight 
down  to  the  Canal  at  the  same  time  that  the  Pacific 
fleet  comes  through  from  Colon. 

"Isn't  that  'er,  all  over?"  demanded  Struthers,  for 
getting  her  place  and  her  position  and  even  her  aspi 
rate  in  the  excitement  of  the  moment.  But  I  handed 
back  the  paper  without  comment.  For  a  day,  how 
ever,  Lady  Allie  has  loomed  large  in  my  thoughts. 


'Sunday  the  Thirteenth 

IT  will  be  two  weeks  to-morrow  since  I've  had  a  line 
from  Dinky-Dunk.  The  world  about  me  is  a  world 
of  beauty,  but  I'm  worried  and  restless  and  Edna 
Millay's  lines  keep  running  through  my  head: 

"...     East  and  West  will  pinch  the  heart 
That  can  not  keep  them  pushed  apart ; 
And  he  whose  soul  is  flat — the  sky 
Will  cave  in  on  him  by  and  by !" 


326 


Wednesday  the  Sixteenth 

PETEE  has  written  to  me  saying  that  unless  he  hears 
from  me  to  the  contrary  he  thinks  he  can  arrange  to 
"run  through"  to  the  Coast  in  time  for  the  Rose 
Tournament  here  on  New  Year's  Day.  He  takes 
the  trouble  to  explain  that  he'll  stay  at  the  Alexandria 
in  Los  Angeles,  so  there'll  be  no  possible  disturbance 
to  me  and  my  family  routine. 

That's  so  like  Peter! 

But  there's  been  no  word  from  Dinky-Dunk.  The 
conviction  is  growing  in  my  mind  that  he's  not  at 
Alabama  Ranch. 


527 


Monday  the  Twenty-first 

A  LETTER  has  just  come  to  me  this  morning  from 
Whinstane  Sandy,  written  in  lead-pencil.  It  said, 
with  an  orthography  all  its  own,  that  Duncan  had 
been  in  bed  for  two  weeks  with  what  they  thought  was 
pneumonia,  but  was  up  again  and  able  to  eat  some 
thing,  and  not  to  worr}-.  It  seemed  a  confident  and 
cheerful  message  at  first,  but  the  oftener  I  read  it 
the  more  worried  I  became.  So  one  load  was  taken 
off  my  heart  only  to  make  room  for  another.  My  first 
decision  was  to  start  north  at  once,  to  get  back  to 
Alabama  Ranch  and  my  Dinky-Dunk  as  fast  as  steam 
could  take  me.  I  was  still  the  sharer  of  his  joys  and 
sorrows,  and  ought  to  be  with  him  when  things  were 
at  their  worst.  But  on  second  thought  it  didn't  seem 
quite  fair  to  the  kiddies,  to  dump  them  from  mid 
summer  into  shack-life  and  a  sub-zero  climate.  And 
always,  always,  always,  there  were  the  children  to  be 
considered.  So  I  wired  Ed  Sherman,  the  station- 
agent  at  Buckhorn,  asking  him  to  send  out  a  message 
to  Duncan,  saying  I  was  waiting  for  him  in  Pasa 
dena  and  to  come  at  once. 

I  wonder  what  his  answer  will  be?     It's  surrender, 

328 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  329 

on  my  part.  It's  capitulation,  and  Dinky-Dunk,  of 
course,  will  recognize  that  fact.  Or  he  ought  to.  But 
it's  not  this  I'm  worrying  over.  It's  Duncan  himself, 
and  his  health.  It  gives  me  a  guilty  feeling. 
I  once  thought  that  I  was  made  to  heal  hearts.  But 
about  all  I  can  do,  I  find,  is  to  bruise  them. 


Thursday  the  Twenty-fourth 

A  TELEGRAM  of  just  one  word  has  come  from 
Duncan,  dated  at  Calgary.  It  said:  "Coming."  I 
could  feel  a  little  tremble  in  my  knees  as  I  read  it. 
He  must  be  better,  or  he'd  never  be  able  to  travel. 
To-morrow  will  be  Christmas  Day,  but  we've  decided 
to  postpone  all  celebration  until  the  kiddies'  daddy 
is  on  the  scene.  It  will  never  seem  much  like  Christ 
mas  to  us  Eskimos,  at  eighty-five  in  the  shade.  And 
we're  temporarily  subduing  that  red-ink  day  to  the 
eyes  of  the  children  by  carefully  secreting  in  one  of 
Peter's  clothes-closets  each  and  every  present  that  has 
come  for  them. 


330 


Sunday  the  Twenty -seventh 

DINKY-DUNK  is  here.  He  arrived  this  morning, 
and  we  were  all  at  the  station  in  our  best  bib-and- 
tucker  and  making  a  fine  show  of  being  offhanded  and 
light-hearted.  But  when  I  saw  the  porter  helping 
down  my  Diddums,  so  white-faced  and  weak  and  tired- 
looking,  something  swelled  up  and  burst  just  under 
my  floating  ribs  and  for  a  moment  I  thought  my  heart 
had  had  a  blow-out  like  a  tire  and  stopped  working 
for  ever  and  ever.  Heaven  knows  I  held  my  hands 
tight,  and  tried  to  be  cheerful,  but  in  spite  of  every 
thing  I  could  do,  on  the  way  home,  I  couldn't  stop  the 
tears  from  running  slowly  down  my  cheeks.  They 
kept  running  and  running,  as  though  I  had  nothing 
to  do  with  it,  exactly  as  a  wound  bleeds.  The  poor 
man,  of  course,  was  done  out  by  the  long  trip.  He 
was  just  blooey,  and  saved  himself  from  being  pitiful 
by  shrinking  back  into  a  shell  of  chalky-faced  self- 
sufficiency.  He  has  said  very  little,  and  has  eaten 
nothing,  but  had  a  sleep  this  afternoon  for  a  couple 
of  hours,  out  in  the  patio  on  a  chaise-longue.  It  hurt 
him,  I  think,  to  find  his  own  children  look  at  him  with 
such  cold  and  speculative  eyes.  But  he  has  changed 

331 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 


shockingly  since  they  last  saw  him.  And  they  have 
so  much  to  fill  up  their  little  lives.  They  haven't  yet 
reached  the  age  when  life  teaches  them  they'd  better 
stick  to  what's  given  them,  even  though  there's  a  bit 
ter  tang  to  its  sweetness! 


Wednesday  the  Thirtieth 

IT  is  incredible,  what  three  days  of  rest  and  forced 
feeding  at  my  implacable  hands,  have  done  for  Dinky- 
Dunk.  He  is  still  a  little  shaky  on  his  pins,  if  he 
walks  far,  and  the  noonday  sun  makes  him  dizzy,  but 
his  eyes  don't  look  so  much  like  saucers  and  I  haven't 
heard  the  trace  of  a  cough  from  him  all  to-day.  Ill 
ness,  of  course,  is  not  romantic,  but  it  plays  its  alto 
gether  too  important  part  in  life,  and  has  to  be  faced. 
And  there  is  something  so  disturbingly  immuring  and 
depersonalizing  about  it !  Dinky-Dunk  appears 
rather  in  a  world  by  himself.  Only  once,  so  far,  has 
he  seemed  to  step  back  to  our  every-day  old  world. 
That  was  when  he  wandered  into  the  Blue  Room  in 
the  East  Wing  where  little  Dinkie  has  been  sleeping. 
I  was  seated  beside  his  little  lordship's  bed  singing: 

"The  little  pigs  sleep  with  their  tails  curled  up," 
and  when  that  had  been  exhausted,  rambling  on  to 

"The  sailor  being  both  tall  and  slim, 
The  lady  fell  in  love  with  him," 

when  pater  familias  wandered  in  and  inquired,  "Why- 
fore  the  cabaret?" 

333 


334  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

I  explained  that  Dinkie,  since  coming  south,  had 
seemed  to  demand  an  even-song  or  two  before  slip 
ping  off. 

"I  see  that  I'll  have  to  take  our  son  in  hand," 
announced  Dinky-Dunk — but  there  was  just  the 
shadow  of  a  smile  about  his  lips  as  he  went  slowly  out 
and  closed  the  door  after  him. 

To-night,  when  I  told  Dinky-Dunk  that  Peter 
would  in  all  likelihood  be  here  to-morrow,  he  listened 
without  batting  an  eyelash.  But  he  asked  if  I'd  mind 
handing  him  a  cigarette,  and  he  studied  my  face  long 
and  intently.  I  don't  know  what  he  saw  there,  or 
what  he  concluded,  for  I  did  my  best  to  keep  it  as  non 
committal  as  possible.  If  there  is  any  move,  it  must 
be  from  him.  That  sour-inked  Irishman  called  Shaw 
has  said  that  women  are  the  wooers  in  this  world.  A 
lot  he  knows  about  it !  .  .  .  Yet  something  has 
happened,  in  the  last  half-hour,  which  both  disturbs 
and  puzzles  me.  When  I  was  unpacking  Dinky- 
Dunk's  second  trunk,  which  had  stood  neglected  for 
almost  four  long  days,  I  came  across  the  letter  which 
I  thought  I'd  put  away  in  the  back  of  the  ranch 
ledger  and  had  failed  to  find.  .  .  .  And  he  had 
it,  all  the  time ! 

The  redoubtable  Struthers,  it  must  be  recorded, 
to-day  handed  me  another  paper,  and  almost  as  tri 
umphantly  as  the  first  one.  She'd  picked  it  up  on  her 
way  home  from  the  druggist's,  where  she  went  for 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  335 

aspirin  for  Dinky-Dunk.  On  what  was  labeled  its 
"Woman's  Page"  was  yet  another  photographic 
reproduction  of  the  fair  Lady  Allie  in  aviation  togs 
and  a  head-line  which  read:  "Insists  On  Tea  Above 
The  Clouds."  But  I  plainly  disappointed  the  expect 
ant  Struthers  by  promptly  handing  the  paper  back 
to  her  and  by  declining  to  make  any  comment. 


Thursday  the  Thirty-first 

PETER  walked  in  on  us  to-day,  a  little  less  spick  and 
span,  I'm  compelled  to  admit,  than  I  had  expected  of 
one  in  his  position,  but  as  easy  and  unconcerned  as 
though  he  had  dropped  in  from  across  the  way  for  a 
cigarette  and  a  cup  of  tea.  And  I  pla}red  up  to  that 
pose  by  having  Struthers  wheel  the  tea-wagon  out  into 
the  patio,  where  we  gathered  about  it  in  a  semicircle, 
as  decorously  as  though  we  were  sitting  in  a  curate's 
garden  to  talk  over  the  program  for  the  next  meeting 
of  the  Ladies'  Auxiliary. 

There  we  sat,  Dinky-Dunk,  my  husband  who  was 
in  love  with  another  woman ;  Peter,  my  friend,  who 
was  in  love  with  me,  and  myself,  who  was  too  busy 
bringing  up  a  family  to  be  in  love  with  anybody. 
There  we  sat  in  that  beautiful  garden,  in  that  balmy 
and  beautiful  afternoon  sunlight,  with  the  bamboos 
whispering  and  a  mocking-bird  singing  from  its  place 
on  the  pepper-tree,  stirring  our  small  cups  and  saying 
"Lemon,  please,"  or  "Just  one  lump,  thank  you."  It 
may  not  be  often,  but  life  does  occasionally  surprise 
us  by  being  theatrical.  For  I  could  not  banish  from 
my  bones  an  impression  of  tremendous  reservations, 

336 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  337 

of  guarded  waiting  and  watching  from  every  point  of 
that  sedate  and  quiet-mannered  little  triangle.  Yet 
for  only  one  moment  had  I  seen  it  come  to  the  front. 
That  was  during  the  moment  when  Dinky-Dunk  and 
Peter  first  shook  hands.  On  both  faces,  for  that 
moment,  I  caught  the  look  with  which  two  knights 
measure  each  other.  Peter,  as  he  lounged  back  in  his 
wicker  chair  and  produced  his  familiar  little  briar 
pipe,  began  to  remind  me  rather  acutely  of  that 
pensive  old  picador  in  Zuloaga's  The  Victim  of  The 
Fete,  the  placid  and  plaintive  and  only  vaguely  hope 
ful  knight  on  his  bony  old  Rosinante,  not  quite  igno 
rant  of  the  fact  that  he  must  forage  on  to  other  fields 
and  look  for  better  luck  in  newer  ventures,  yet  not 
quite  forgetful  that  life,  after  all,  is  rather  a  blithe 
adventure  and  that  the  man  who  refuses  to  surrender 
his  courage,  no  matter  what  whimsical  turns  the 
adventure  may  take,  is  still  to  be  reckoned  the  con 
queror.  But  later  on  he  was  jolly  enough  and  direct 
enough,  when  he  got  to  showing  Dinky-Dunk  his 
books  and  curios.  I  suppose,  at  heart,  he  was  about 
us  interested  in  those  things  as  an  aquarium  angel- 
fish  is  in  a  Sunday  afternoon  visitor.  But  if  it  was 
pretense,  and  nothing  more,  there  was  very  actual 
kindliness  in  it.  And  there  was  nothing  left  for  me 
but  to  sit  tight,  and  refill  the  little  lacquered  gold  cups 
when  necessary,  and  smile  non-committally  when 
Dinky-Dunk  explained  that  my  idea  of  Heaven  was  a 


338  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

place  where  husbands  were  served  en  brochette,  and 
emulate  the  Priest  and  the  Levite  by  passing  by  on 
the  other  side  when  Peter  asked  me  if  I'd  ever  heard 
that  the  West  was  good  for  mules  and  men  but  hard 
on  horses  and  women.  And  it  suddenly  struck  me  as 
odd,  the  timidities  and  reticences  which  nature  imposes 
on  our  souls.  It  seemed  so  ridiculous  that  the  three 
of  us  couldn't  sit  there  and  unbosom  our  hearts  of 
what  was  hidden  away  in  them,  that  we  couldn't  be 
open  and  honest  and  aboveboard  and  say  just  what 
we  felt  and  thought,  that  we  couldn't  quietly  talk 
things  out  to  an  end  and  find  where  each  and  all  of 
us  stood.  But  men  and  women  are  not  made  that  way. 
Otherwise,  I  suppose,  life  would  be  too  Edenic,  and 
we'd  part  company  with  a  very  old  and  venerable 
interest  in  Paradise! 


Saturday  the  Second 

PETER  had  arranged  to  come  for  us  with  a  motor 
car  and  carry  us  all  off  to  the  Rose  Tournament  yes 
terday  morning,  "for  I  do  wan*  to  be  sitting  right 
next  to  that  little  tike  of  yours,"  he  explained,  mean 
ing  Dinkie,  "when  he  bumps  into  his  first  brass  band !" 

But  little  Dinkie  didn't  hear  his  brass  band,  and 
we  didn't  go  to  the  Rose  Tournament,  although  it  was 
almost  at  our  doors  and  some  eighty  thousand  crowded 
automobiles  foregathered  here  from  the  rest  of  the 
state  to  get  a  glimpse  of  it.  l^or  Peter,  who  is  stay 
ing  at  the  Greene  here  instead  of  at  the  Alexandria 
over  in  Los  Angeles,  presented  himself  before  I'd  even 
sat  down  to  breakfast  and  before  lazy  old  Dinky-Dunk 
was  even  out  of  bed. 

Peter,  I  noticed,  had  a  somewhat  hollow  look  about 
the  eye,  but  I  accepted  it  as  nothing  more  than  the 
after-effects  of  his  long  trip,  and  blithely  commanded 
him  to  sit  down  and  partake  of  my  coffee. 

Peter,  however,  wasn't  thinking  about  coffee. 

"I'm  afraid,"  he  began,  "that  I'm  bringing  you 
rather — rather  bad  news." 

We  stood  for  a  moment  with  our  gazes  locked.    He 

339 


340  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

seemed  appraising  me,  speculating  on  just  what  effect 
this  message  of  his  might  have  on  me. 

"What  is  it?"  I  asked,  with  that  forlorn  tug  at 
inner  reserves  which  life  teaches  us  to  send  over  the 
wire  as  we  grow  older. 

"I've  come,"  explained  Peter,  "simply  because  this 
thing  would  have  reached  you  a  little  later  in  your 
morning  paper — and  I  hated  the  thought  of  having  it 
spring  out  at  you  that  way.  So  you  won't  mind,  will 
you?  You'll  understand  the  motive  behind  the 
message  ?" 

"But  what  is  it?"  I  repeated,  a  little  astonished  by 
this  obliquity  in  a  man  customarily  so  direct. 

"It's  about  Lady  Newland,"  he  finally  said.  And 
the  solemnity  of  his  face  rather  frightened  me. 

"She's  not  dead?"  I  asked  in  a  breath. 

Peter  shook  his  head  from  side  to  side. 

"She's  been  rather  badly  hurt,"  he  said,  after  sev 
eral  moments  of  silence.  "Her  plane  was  winged  yes 
terday  afternoon  by  a  navy  flier  over  San  Diego  Bay. 
She  didn't  fall,  but  it  was  a  forced  landing  and  her 
machine  had  taken  fire  before  they  could  get  her  out 
of  her  seat." 

"You  mean  she  was  burnt?"  I  cried,  chilled  by  the 
horror  of  it. 

And,  inapposite  as  it  seemed,  my  thoughts  flashed 
back  to  that  lithe  and  buoyant  figure,  and  then  to  the 
picture  of  it  charred  and  scorched  and  suffering. 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  341 

"Only  her  face,"  was  Peter's  quiet  and  very  delib 
erate  reply. 

"Only  her  face,"  I  repeated,  not  quite  understand 
ing  him. 

"The  men  from  the  North  Bay  field  had  her  out  a 
minute  or  two  after  she  landed.  But  practically  the 
whole  plane  was  afire.  Her  heavy  flying  coat  and 
gauntlets  saved  her  body  and  hands.  But  her  face 
was  unprotected.  She — " 

"Do  you  mean  she'll  be  disfigured?"  I  asked,  remem 
bering  the  loveliness  of  that  face  with  its  red  and  wil 
ful  lips  and  its  ever-changing  tourmaline  eyes. 

"I'm  afraid  so,"  was  Peter's  answer.  "But  I've 
been  wiring,  and  you'll  be  quite  safe  in  telling  your 
husband  that  she's  in  no  actual  danger.  The  Marine 
Hospital  officials  have  acknowledged  that  no  flame  was 
inhaled,  that  it's  merely  temporary  shock,  and,  of 
course,  the  face-burn." 

"But  what  can  they  do?"  I  asked,  in  little  more  than 
a  whisper. 

"They're  trying  the  new  ambersine  treatment,  and 
later  on,  I  suppose,  they  can  rely  on  skin-grafting  and 
facial  surgery,"  Peter  explained  to  me. 

"Is  it  that  bad  ?"  I  asked,  sitting  down  in  one  of  the 
empty  chairs,  for  the  mere  effort  to  vision  any  such 
disfigurement  had  brought  a  Channel-crossing  and 
Calais-packet  feeling  to  me. 

"It's  very  sad,"  said  Peter,  more  ill-at-ease  than 


342  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

I'd  ever  seen  him  before.  "But  there's  positively  no 
danger,  remember.  It  won't  be  so  bad  as  your  morn 
ing  paper  will  try  to  make  it  out.  They've  sensa 
tionalized  it,  of  course.  That's  why  I  wanted  to  be 
here  first,  and  give  you  the  facts.  They  are  distress 
ing  enough,  God  knows,  without  those  yellow  reporters 
working  them  over  for  wire  consumption." 

I  was  glad  that  Peter  didn't  offer  to  stay,  didn't 
even  seem  to  wish  to  stay.  I  wanted  quietness  and 
time  to  think  the  thing  over.  Dinky-Dunk,  I  realized, 
would  have  to  be  told,  and  told  at  once.  It  would,  of 
course,  be  a  shock  to  him.  And  it  would  be  something 
more.  It  would  be  a  sudden  crowding  to  some  final 
issue  of  all  those  possibilities  which  lay  like  spring- 
traps  beneath  the  under-brush  of  our  indifference. 
I  had  no  way  of  knowing  what  it  was  that  had 
attracted  him  to  Lady  Alicia.  Beauty  of  face,  of 
course,  must  have  been  a  factor  in  it.  And  that  beauty 
was  now  gone.  But  love,  according  to  the  Prophets 
and  the  Poets,  overcometh  all  things.  And  in  her  very 
helplessness,  it  was  only  too  plain  to  me,  his  Cousin 
Allie  might  appeal  to  him  in  a  more  personal  and  more 
perilous  way.  My  Diddums  himself,  of  late,  had 
appealed  more  to  me  in  his  weakness  and  his  unhappi- 
ness  than  in  his  earlier  strength  and  triumph.  There 
was  a  time,  in  fact,  when  I  had  almost  grown  to  hate 
his  successes.  And  yet  he  was  my  husband.  He  was 
mine.  And  it  was  a  human  enough  instinct  to  fight 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  343 

for  what  was  one's  own.  But  that  wild-bird  part  of 
man  known  as  his  will  could  never  be  caged  and 
chained.  If  somewhere  far  off  it  beheld  beauty  and 
nobility  it  must  be  free  to  wing  its  way  where  it 
wished.  The  only  bond  that  held  it  was  the  bond  of 
free-giving  and  goodness.  And  if  it  abjured  such 
things  as  that,  the  sooner  the  flight  took  place  and 
the  colors  were  shown,  the  better.  If  on  the  home- 
bough  beside  him  nested  neither  beauty  nor  nobility, 
it  was  only  natural  that  he  should  wander  a-field  for 
what  I  had  failed  to  give  him.  And  now,  in  this  final 
test,  I  must  not  altogether  fail  him.  For  once  in  my 
life,  I  concluded,  I  had  to  be  generous. 

So  I  waited  until  Dinky-Dunk  emerged.  I  waited, 
deep  in  thought,  while  he  splashed  like  a  sea-lion  in 
his  bath,  and  called  out  to  Struthers  almost  gaily  for 
his  glass  of  orange- juice,  and  shaved,  and  opened  and 
closed  drawers,  and  finished  dressing  and  came  out  in 
his  cool-looking  suit  of  cricketer's  flannel,  so  immacu 
late  and  freshly-pressed  that  one  would  never  dream 
it  had  been  bought  in  England  and  packed  in  moth 
balls  for  four  long  years. 

I  heard  him  asking  for  the  kiddies  while  I  was  still 
out  in  the  patio  putting  the  finishing  touches  to  his 
breakfast-table,  and  his  grunt  that  was  half  a  sigh 
when  he  learned  that  they'd  been  sent  off  before  he'd 
had  a  glimpse  of  them.  And  I  could  see  him  inhale  a 
lungful  of  the  balmy  morning  air  as  he  stood  in  the 


844  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

open  doorway  and  stared,  not  without  approval,  at 
me  and  the  new-minted  day. 

"Why  the  clouded  brow,  Lady-Bird?"  he  demanded 
as  he  joined  me  at  the  little  wicker  table. 

"I've  had  some  rather  disturbing  news,"  I  told 
him,  wondering  just  how  to  begin. 

"The  kiddies?"  he  asked,  stopping  short. 

I  stared  at  him  closely  as  I  shook  my  head  in 
answer  to  that  question.  He  looked  leaner  and  frailer 
and  less  robustious  than  of  old.  But  in  my  heart  of 
hearts  I  liked  him  that  way.  It  left  him  the  helpless 
and  unprotesting  victim  of  that  run-over  maternal 
instinct  of  mine  which  took  wayward  joy  in  mothering 
\vhat  it  couldn't  master.  It  had  brought  him  a  little 
closer  to  me.  But  that  contact,  I  remembered,  was 
perhaps  to  be  only  something  of  the  moment. 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  told  him  as  quietly  as  I  could, 
"I  want  you  to  go  down  to  San  Diego  and  see  Lady 
Allie." 

It  was  a  less  surprised  look  than  a  barricaded  one 
that  came  into  his  eyes. 

"Why  ?"  he  asked  as  he  slowly  seated  himself  across 
the  table  from  me. 

"Because  I  think  she  needs  you,"  I  found  the  cour 
age  to  tell  him. 

"Why?"  he  asked  still  again, 

"There  has  been  an  accident,"  I  told  him. 

"What  sort  of  accident?"  he  quickly  inquired,  with 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  345 

one  hand  arrested  as  he  went  to  shake  out  his  table- 
napkin. 

"It  was  an  air-ship  accident.  And  Lady  Allie's 
been  hurt." 

"Badly?"  he  asked,  as  our  glances  met. 

"Not  badly,  in  one  way,"  I  explained  to  him. 
"She's  not  in  any  danger,  I  mean.  But  her  plane 
caught  fire,  and  she's  been  burned  about  the  face." 

His  lips  parted  slightly,  as  he  sat  staring  at  me. 
And  slowly  up  into  his  colorless  face  crept  a  blighted 
look,  a  look  which  brought  a  vague  yet  vast  unhap- 
piness  to  me  as  I  sat  contemplating  it. 

"Do  you  mean  she's  disfigured,"  he  asked,  "that 
it's  something  she'll  always — " 

"I'm  afraid  so,"  I  said,  when  he  did  not  finish  his 
sentence. 

He  sat  looking  down  at  his  empty  plate  for  a  long 
time.  • 

"And  you  want  me  to  go?"  he  finally  said. 

"Yes,"  I  told  him. 

He  was  silent  for  still  another  ponderable  space  of 
time. 

"But  do  you  understand — "  he  began.  And  for 
the  second  time  he  didn't  finish  his  sentence. 

"I  understand,"  I  told  him,  doing  my  best  to  sit 
steady  under  his  inquisitorial  eye.  Then  he  looked 
down  at  the  empty  plate  again. 

"All  right,"  he  said  at  last.     He  spoke  in  a  quite 


34<6  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

i 
flat   and   colorless   tone.      But   it   masked   a    decision 

which  we  both  must  have  recognized  as  being  momen 
tous.  And  I  knew,  without  saying  anything  further, 
that  he  would  go 


Sunday  the  Third 

DINKY-DUNK  left  Friday  night  and  got  back  early 
this  morning  before  I  was  up.  This  naturally  sur 
prised  me.  But  what  surprised  me  more  was  the  way 
he  looked.  He  was  white  and  shaken  and  drawn  about 
the  eyes.  He  seemed  so  wretched  that  I  couldn't  help 
feeling  sorry  for  him. 

"She  wouldn't  see  me!"  was  all  he  said  as  I  stopped 
him  on  the  way  to  his  room. 

But  he  rather  startled  me,  fifteen  minutes  later,  by 
calling  up  the  Greene  and  asking  for  Peter.  And 
before  half  an  hour  had  dragged  past  Peter  appeared 
in  person.  He  ignored  the  children,  and  apparently 
avoided  me,  and  went  straight  out  to  the  pergola, 
where  he  and  Dinky-Dunk  fell  to  pacing  slowly  up 
and  down,  with  the  shadows  dappling  their  white- 
clad  shoulders  like  leopards  as  they  walked  up  and 
down,  up  and  down,  as  serious  and  solemn  as  two  min 
isters  of  state  in  a  national  crisis.  And  something,  I 
scarcely  knew  what,  kept  me  from  going  out  and 
joining  them. 

It  was  Peter  himself  who  finally  came  in  to  me. 
He  surprised  me,  in  the  first  place,  by  shaking  hands. 

347 


348  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

He  did  it  with  that  wistful  wandering-picador  smile 
of  his  on  his  rather  Zuloagaish  face. 

"I've  got  to  say  good-by,"  I  found  him  saying 
to  me. 

"Peter!"  I  called  out  in  startled  protest,  trying  to 
draw  back  so  I  could  see  him  better.  But  he  kept 
my  hand. 

"I'm  going  east  to-night,"  he  quite  casually 
announced.  "But  above  all  things  I  want  you  and 
your  Dinky-Dunk  to  hang  on  here  as  long  as  you  can. 
He  needs  it.  I'm  stepping  out.  No,  I  don't  mean 
that,  exactly,  for  I'd  never  stepped  in.  But  it's  a  fine 
thing,  in  this  world,  for  men  and  women  to  be  real 
friends.  And  I  know,  until  we  shuffle  off,  that  we're 
going  to  be  that !" 

"Peter !"  I  cried  again,  trying  not  to  choke  up  with 
the  sudden  sense  of  deprivation  that  was  battering  my 
Wart  to  pieces.  And  the  light  in  faithful  old  Peter's 
eyes  didn't  make  it  any  easier. 

But  he  dropped  my  hand,  of  a  sudden,  and  went 
stt  mbling  rather  awkardly  over  the  Spanish  tiling  as 
he  passed  out  to  the  waiting  car.  I  watched  him  as 
V-  climbed  into  it,  stiffly  yet  with  a  show  of  careless 
bravado,  for  all  the  world  like  the  lean-jowled  knight 
of  the  vanished  fete  mounting  his  bony  old  Rosinante. 

It  was  nearly  half  an  hour  later  that  Dinky-Dunk 
came  into  the  cool-shadowed  living-room  where  I  was 
making  a  pretense  of  being  busy  at  cutting  down 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  349 

some  of  Dinkie's  rompers  for  Pee-Wee,  who  most 
assuredly  must  soon  bid  farewell  to  skirts. 

"Will  you  sit  down,  please?"  he  said  with  an 
abstracted  sort  of  formality.  For  he'd  caught  me  on 
the  wing,  half-way  back  from  the  open  window,  where 
I'd  been  glancing  out  to  make  sure  Struthers  was  on 
guard  with  the  children. 

My  face  was  a  question,  I  suppose,  even  when  I 
didn't  speak. 

"There's  something  I  want  you  to  be  very  quiet 
and  courageous  about,"  was  my  husband's  none  too 
tranquillizing  beginning.  And  I  could  feel  my  pulse 
quicken. 

"What  is  it?"  I  asked,  wondering  just  what  women 
should  do  to  make  themselves  quiet  and  courageous. 

"It's  about  Allie,"  answered  my  husband,  speak 
ing  so  slowly  and  deliberately  that  it  sounded  unnat 
ural.  "She  shot  herself  last  night.  She — she  killed 
herself,  with  an  army  revolver  she'd  borrowed  from 
a  young  officer  down  there." 

I  couldn't  quite  understand,  at  first.  The  words 
seemed  like  half-drowned  things  my  mind  had  to  work 
over  and  resuscitate  and  coax  back  into  life. 

"This  is  terrible!"  I  said  at  last,  feebly,  foolishly, 
as  the  meaning  of  it  all  filtered  through  my  none  too 
active  brain. 

"It's  terrible  for  me,"  acknowledged  Dinky-Dunk, 
with  a  self-pity  which  I  wasn't  slow  to  resent. 


350  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"But  why  aren't  you  there?"  I  demanded.  "Why 
aren't  you  there  to  keep  a  little  decency  about  the 
thing?  Why  aren't  you  looking  after  what's  left 
of  her?" 

Dinky-Dunk's  eye  evaded  mine,  but  only  for  a 
moment. 

"Colonel  Ainsley-Brook  is  coming  back  from  Wash 
ington  to  take  possession  of  the  remains,"  he  explained 
with  a  sort  of  dry-lipped  patience,  "and  take  them 
home." 

"But  why  should  an  outsider  like — " 

Dinky-Dunk  stopped  me  with  a  gesture. 

"He  and  Allie  were  married,  a  little  over  three  weeks 
ago,"  my  husband  quietly  informed  me.  And  for 
the  second  time  I  had  to  work  life  into  what  seemed 
limp  and  sodden  words. 

"Did  you  know  about  that  ?"  I  asked. 

"Yes,  Allie  wrote  to  me  about  it,  at  the  time,"  he 
replied  with  a  sort  of  coerced  candor.  "She  said  it 
seemed  about  the  only  thing  left  to  do." 

"Why  should  she  say  that?" 

Dinky-Dunk  stared  at  me  with  something  strangely 
like  a  pleading  look  in  his  haggard  eye. 

"Wouldn't  it  be  better  to  keep  away  from  all  that, 
at  a  time  like  this?"  he  finally  asked. 

"No,"  I  told  him,  "this  is  the  time  we  can't  keep 
away  from  it.  She  wrote  you  that  because  she  was  in 
love  with  you.  Isn't  that  the  truth?" 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  351 

Dinky-Dunk  raised  his  hand,  as  though  he  were 
attempting  a  movement  of  protest,  and  then  dropped 
it  again.  His  eyes,  I  noticed,  were  luminous  with 
a  sort  of  inward-burning  misery.  But  I  had  no 
intention  of  being  merciful.  I  had  no  chance  of  being 
merciful.  It  was  like  an  operation  without  ether,  but 
it  had  to  be  gone  through  with.  It  had  to  be  cut  out, 
in  some  way,  that  whole  cancerous  growth  of  hate 
and  distrust. 

"Isn't  that  the  truth?"  I  repeated. 

"Oh,  Tabby,  don't  turn  the  knife  in  the  wound!" 
cried  Dinky-Dunk,  with  his  face  more  than  ever 
pinched  with  misery. 

"Then  it  is  a  wound!"  I  proclaimed  in  dolorous 
enough  triumph.  "But  there's  still  another  question, 
Dinky-Dunk,  you  must  answer,"  I  went  on,  speaking 
as  slowly  and  precisely  as  I  could,  as  though  delibera 
tion  in  speech  might  in  some  way  make  clearer  a  mat 
ter  recognized  as  only  too  dark  in  spirit.  "And  it 
must  be  answered  honestly,  without  any  quibble  as 
to  the  meaning  of  words.  Were  you  in  love  with  Lady 
Allie?" 

His  gesture  of  repugnance,  of  seeming  self-hate, 
was  both  a  prompt  and  a  puzzling  one. 

"That's  the  hideous,  the  simply  hideous  part  of  it 
all,"  he  cried  out  in  a  sort  of  listless  desperation. 

"Why  hideous?"  I  demanded,  quite  clear-headed, 
and  quite  determined  that  now  or  never  the  over- 


352  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

scored  slate  of  suspicion  should  be  wiped  clean.  1 
still  forlornly  and  foolishly  felt,  I  suppose,  that  he 
might  yet  usher  before  me  some  miraculously  simple 
explanation  that  would  wipe  his  scutcheon  clean,  that 
would  put  everything  back  to  the  older  and  happier 
order.  But  as  I  heard  his  deep-wrung  cry  of  "Oh, 
what's  the  good  of  all  this?"  I  knew  that  life  wasn't 
so  romantic  as  we're  always  trying  to  make  it. 

"I've  got  to  know,"  I  said,  as  steel-cold  as  a 
surgeon. 

"But  can't  you  see  that  it's — that  it's  worse  than 
revolting  to  me?"  he  contended,  with  the  look  of  a  man 
harried  beyond  endurance. 

"Why  should  it  be?"  I  exacted. 

He  sank  down  in  the  low  chair  with  the  ranch- 
brand  on  its  leather  back.  It  was  an  oddly  child-like 
movement  of  collapse.  But  I  daren't  let  myself  feel 
sorry  for  him. 

"Because  it's  all  so  rottenly  ignoble,"  he  said,  with 
out  looking  at  me. 

"For  whom  ?"  I  asked,  trying  to  speak  calmly. 

"For  me — for  you,"  he  cried  out,  with  his  head  in 
his  hands.  "For  you  to  have  been  faced  with,  I  mean. 
It's  awful,  to  think  that  you've  had  to  stand  it !"  He 
reached  out  for  me,  but  I  was  too  far  away  for  him 
to  touch.  "Oh,  Tabby,  I've  been  such  an  awful  rotter. 
And  this  thing  that's  happened  has  just  brought  it 
home  to  me." 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  353 

"Then  you  cared,  that  much?"  I  demanded,  feel 
ing  the  bottom  of  my  heart  fall  out,  for  all  the  world 
like  the  floor  of  a  dump-cart. 

"No,  no;  that's  the  unforgivable  part  of  it,"  b.2 
cried  in  quick  protest.  "It's  not  only  that  I  did  you  a 
great  Avrong,  Tabby,  but  I  did  her  a  worse  one.  I 
coolly  exploited  something  that  I  should  have  at  least 
respected.  I  manipulated  and  used  a  woman  I  should 
have  been  more  generous  with.  There  wasn't  even 
bigness  in  it,  from  my  side  of  the  game.  I  traded  on 
that  dead  woman's  weakness.  And  my  hands  would 
be  cleaner  if  I  could  come  to  you  with  the  claim  that 
I'd  really  cared  for  her,  that  I'd  been  swept  off  my 
feet,  that  passion  had  blinded  me  to  the  things  I 
should  have  remembered."  He  let  his  hands  fall 
between  his  knees.  Knowing  him  as  the  man  of 
reticence  that  he  was,  it  seemed  an  indescribably  tragic 
gesture.  And  it  struck  me  as  odd,  the  next  moment, 
that  he  should  be  actually  sobbing.  "Oh,  my  dear, 
my  dear,  the  one  thing  I  was  blind  to  was  your  big 
ness,  was  your  goodness.  The  one  thing  I  forgot  was 
how  true  blue  you  could  be." 

I  sat  there  staring  at  his  still  heaving  shoulders, 
turning  over  what  he  had  said,  turning  it  over  and 
over,  like  a  park-squirrel  with  a  nut.  I  found  a  great 
deal  to  think  about,  but  little  to  say. 

"I  don't  blame  you  for  despising  me,"  Dinky-Dunk 
said,  out  of  the  silence,  once  more  in  control  of  himself. 


354  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

"I  was  thinking  of  her,"  I  explained.  And  then  I 
found  the  courage  to  look  into  my  husband's  face. 
"No,  Dinky-Dunk,  I  don't  despise  you,"  I  told  him, 
remembering  that  he  was  still  a  weak  and  shaken  man. 
"But  I  pity  you.  I  do  indeed  pity  you.  For  it's  self 
ishness,  it  seems  to  me,  which  costs  us  so  much,  in 
the  end." 

He  seemed  to  agree  with  me,  by  a  slow  movement 
of  the  head. 

"That's  the  only  glimmer  of  hope  I  have,"  he  sur 
prised  me  by  saying. 

"But  why  hope  from  that?"  I  asked. 

"Because  you're  so  utterly  without  selfishness," 
that  deluded  man  cried  out  to  me.  "You  were  always 
that  way,  but  I  didn't  have  the  brains  to  see  it.  I 
never  quite  saw  it  until  you  sent  me  down  to — to  her." 
He  came  to  a  stop,  and  sat  staring  at  the  terra-cotta 
Spanish  floor-tiles.  "/  knew  it  was  useless,  tragically 
useless.  You  didn't.  But  you  were  brave  enough  to 
let  my  weakness  do  its  worst,  if  it  had  to.  And  that 
makes  me  feel  that  I'm  not  fit  to  touch  you,  that  I'm 
not  even  fit  to  walk  on  the  same  ground  with  you!" 

I  tried  my  best  to  remain  judicial. 

"But  this,  Dinky-Dunk,  isn't  being  quite  fair  to 
either  of  us,"  I  protested,  turning  away  to  push  in  a 
hair-pin  so  that  he  wouldn't  see  the  tremble  that  I 
could  feel  in  my  lower  lip.  For  an  unreasonable  and 
illogical  and  absurdly  big  wave  of  compassion  for  my 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  355 

poor  old  Dinky-Dunk  was  welling  up  through  my 
tired  body,  threatening  to  leave  me  and  all  my  make- 
believe  dignity  as  wobbly  as  a  street-procession  Queen 
of  Sheba  on  her  circus-fioat.  I  #as  hearing,  I  knew, 
the  words  that  I'd  waited  for,  this  many  a  month. 
I  was  at  last  facing  the  scene  I'd  again  and  again 
dramatized  on  the  narrow  stage  of  my  woman's  imagi 
nation.  But  instead  of  bringing  me  release,  it  brought 
me  heart-ache;  instead  of  spelling  victory,  it  came 
involved  with  the  thin  humiliations  of  compromise. 
For  things  could  never  be  the  same  again.  The  blot 
was  there  on  the  scutcheon,  and  could  never  be  argued 
away.  The  man  I  loved  had  let  the  grit  get  into  the 
bearings  of  his  soul,  had  let  that  grit  grind  away  life's 
delicate  surfaces  without  even  knowing  the  wine  of 
abandoned  speed.  He  had  been  nothing  better  than 
the  passive  agent,  the  fretful  and  neutral  factor,  the 
cheated  one  without  even  the  glory  of  conquest  or 
the  tang  of  triumph.  But  he  had  been  saved  for  me. 
He  was  there  within  arm's  reach  of  me,  battered,  but 
with  the  wine-glow  of  utter  contrition  on  his  face. 

"Take  me  back,  Babushka,"  I  could  hear  his  shaken 
voice  imploring.  "I  don't  deserve  it — but  I  can't  go 
on  without  you.  I  can't!  I've  had  enough  of  hell. 
And  I  need  you  more  than  anything  else  in  this 
world !" 

That,  I  had  intended  telling  him,  wasn't  playing 
<juite  fair-  But  when  he  reached  out  his  hands  toward 


356  THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER 

me,  exactly  as  I've  seen  his  own  Dinky  do  at  night 
fall  when  a  darkening  room  left  his  little  spirit 
hungry  for  companionship,  something  melted  like  an 
overlooked  chocolate  mousse  in  my  crazy  old  maternal 
heart,  and  before  I  was  altogether  aware  of  it  I'd  let 
my  hands  slip  over  his  shoulders  as  he  knelt  with  his 
bowed  head  in  my  lap.  The  sight  of  his  colorless  and 
unhappy  face  with  that  indescribable  homeless-dog 
look  in  his  eyes  was  too  much  for  me.  I  gave  up. 
I  hugged  his  head  to  my  breast-bone  as  though  it 
were  my  only  life-buoy  in  an  empty  and  endless  Atlan 
tic  and  only  stopped  when  I  had  to  rub  the  end  of  my 
nose,  which  I  couldn't  keep  a  collection  of  several  big 
tears  from  tickling. 

"I'm  a  fool,  Dinky-Dunk,  a  most  awful  fool,"  I 
tried  to  tell  him,  when  he  gave  me  a  chance  to  breathe 
again.  "And  I've  got  a  temper  like  a  bob-cat !" 

"No,  no,  Beloved,"  he  protested,  "it's  not  foolish 
ness — it's  nobility!" 

I  couldn't  answer  him,  for  his  arms  had  closed 
about  me  again.  "And  I  love  you,  Tabbie,  I  love  you 
with  every  inch  of  my  body !" 

Women  are  weak.  And  there  is  no  such  thing,  so 
far  as  I  know,  as  an  altogether  and  utterly  perfect 
man.  So  we  must  winnow  strength  out  of  our  weak 
ness,  make  the  best  of  a  bad  bargain,  and  over-scroll 
the  walls  of  our  life-cell  with  the  illusions  which  may 
come  to  mean  as  much  as  the  stone  and  iron  that 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  357 

imprison  us.  All  we  can  do,  we  who  are  older  and 
wiser,  is  wistfully  to  overlook  the  wobble  where  the 
meshed  perfection  of  youth  has  been  bruised  and 
abused  and  loosened,  tighten  up  the  bearings, 
and  keep  as  blithely  as  we  can  to  the  worn 
old  road.  For  life,  after  all,  is  a  turn-pike 
of  concession  deep-bedded  with  compromise.  And 
our  To-morrows  are  only  our  To-days  over 
again.  ...  So  Dinky-Dunk,  who  keeps  say 
ing  in  unexpected  and  intriguing  ways  that  he  can't 
live  without  me,  is  trying  to  make  love  to  me  as  he 
did  in  the  old  days  before  he  got  salt-and-peppery 
above  the  ears.  And  I'm  blockhead  enough  to  believe 
him.  I'm  like  an  old  shoe,  I  suppose,  comfortable  but 
not  showy.  Yet  it's  the  children  we  really  have  to 
think  of.  Our  crazy  old  patch-work  of  the  Past  may 
be  our  own,  but  the  Future  belongs  to  them.  There's 
a  heap  of  good,  though,  in  my  humble-eyed  old 
Dinky-Dunk,  too  much  good  ever  to  lose  him,  what 
ever  may  have  happened  in  the  days  that  are  over. 


Sunday  the  Twenty-fourth 

DINKY-DUNK,  whom  I  actually  heard  singing  as  he 
took  his  bath  this  morning,  is  exercising  his  paternal 
prerogative  of  training  little  Dinkie  to  go  to  bed 
without  a  light.  He  has  peremptorily  taken  the  mat 
ter  out  of  my  hands,  and  is,  of  course,  prodigiously 
solemn  about  it  all. 

"I'll  show  that  young  Turk  who's  boss  around  this 
house !"  he  magisterially  proclaims  almost  every  night 
when  the  youthful  wails  of  protest  start  to  come  from 
the  Blue  Room  in  the  East  Wing. 

And  off  he  goes,  with  his  Holbein's  Astronomer 
mouth  set  firm  and  the  fiercest  of  frowns  on  his  face. 

It  had  a  tendency  to  terrify  me,  at  first.  But  now  I 
know  what  a  colossal  old  fraud  and  humbug  this  same 
soft-hearted  and  granite-crusted  specimen  of  human 
ity  can  be.  For  last  night,  after  the  usual  demon 
stration,  I  slipped  out  to  the  Blue  Room  and  found 
big  Dunkie  kneeling  down  beside  little  Dinkie's  bed, 
with  Dinkie's  small  hand  softly  enclosed  in  his  dad's 
big  paw,  and  Dinkie's  yellow  head  nestled  close 
against  his  dad's  salt-and-peppery  pate. 

It  made  me  gulp  a  little,  for  some  reason  or  other. 
358 


THE  PRAIRIE  MOTHER  359 

So  I  tiptoed  away,  without  letting  my  lord  and  master 
know  I'd  discovered  the  secret  of  that  stern  mastery 
of  his.  And  later  on  Dinky-Dunk  himself  tiptoed 
into  Peter's  study,  farther  down  the  same  wing,  so, 
that  he  could,  with  a  shadow  of  truth,  explain  that 
he'd  been  looking  over  some  of  the  Spanish  manu 
scripts  there,  when  I  happened  to  ask  him,  on  his 
return,  just  what  had  kept  him  away  so  long! 


TH£  EXD 


THE  PRAIRIE  CHILD 


THE  PRAIRIE  CHILD 

Friday  the  Eighth  of  March 
. 

"BUT  the  thing  I  can't  understand,  Dinky-Dunk, 
is  how  you  ever  could." 

"Could  what?"  my  husband  asked  in  an  aerated 
tone  of  voice. 

I  had  to  gulp  before  I  got  it  out. 

"Could  kiss  a  woman  like  that,"  I  managed  to  ex 
plain. 

Duncan  Argyll  McKail  looked  at  me  with  a  much 
cooler  eye  than  I  had  expected.  If  he  saw  my  shud 
der,  he  paid  no  attention  to  it. 

"On  much  the  same  principle,"  he  quietly  an 
nounced,  "that  the  Chinese  eat  birds'  nests." 

"Just  what  do  you  mean  by  that?"  I  demanded, 
resenting  the  fact  that  he  could  stand  as  silent  as  a 
December  beehive  before  my  morosely  questioning 
eyes. 

"I  mean  that,  being  married,  you've  run  away 
with  the  idea  that  all  birds'  nests  are  made  out  of 

1 


2  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

mud  and  straw,  with  possibly  a  garnish  of  horse 
hairs.  But  if  you'd  really  examine  these  edible  nests 
you'd  find  they  were  made  of  surprisingly  appealing 
and  succulent  tendrils.  They're  quite  appetizing, 
you  may  be  sure,  or  they'd  never  be  eaten!" 

I  stood  turning  this  over,  exactly  as  I've  seen 
my  Dinkie  turn  over  an  unexpectedly  rancid  nut. 

"Aren't  you,  under  the  circumstances,  being  rather 
stupidly  clever?"  I  finally  asked. 

"When  I  suppose  you'd  rather  see  me  cleverly 
stupid?"  he  found  the  heart  to  suggest. 

"But  that  woman,  to  me,  always  looked  like  a 
frog,"  I  protested,  doing  my  best  to  duplicate  his 
pose  of  impersonality. 

"Well,  she  doesn't  make  love  like  a  frog,"  he  re 
torted  with  his  first  betraying  touch  of  anger.  I 
turned  to  the  window,  to  the  end  that  my  Eliza- 
Crossing-the-Ice  look  wouldn't  be  entirely  at  his 
mercy.  A  belated  March  blizzard  was  slapping  at 
the  panes  and  cuffing  the  house-corners.  At  the  end 
of  a  long  winter,  I  knew,  tempers  were  apt  to  be 
short.  But  this  was  much  more  than  a  hatter  of 
barometers.  The  man  I'd  wanted  to  live  with  like 
a  second  "Suzanne  de  Sirmont"  in  Daudet's  Hap 
piness  had  not  only  cut  me  to  the  quick  but  was 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  3 

rubbing  salt  in  the  wound.  He  had  said  what  he 
did  with  deliberate  intent  to  hurt  me,  for  it  was  only 
too  obvious  that  he  was  tired  of  being  on  the  de 
fensive.  And  it  did  hurt.  It  couldn't  help  hurting. 
For  the  man,  after  all,  was  my  husband.  He  was 
the  husband  to  whom  I'd  given  up  the  best  part  of  my 
life,  the  two-legged  basket  into  which  I'd  packed  all 
my  eggs  of  allegiance.  And  now  he  was  scrambling 
that  precious  collection  for  a  cheap  omelette  of  amor 
ous  adventure.  He  was  my  husband,  I  kept  remind 
ing  myself.  But  that  didn't  cover  the  entire  case. 
No  husband  whose  heart  is  right  stands  holding  an 
other  woman's  shoulder  and  tries  to  read  her  shoe- 
numbers  through  her  ardently  upturned  eyes.  It 
shows  the  wind  is  not  blowing  right  in  the  home 
circle.  It  shows  a  rent  in  the  dyke,  a  flaw  in  the 
blade,  a  breach  in  the  fortress-wall  of  faith.  For 
marriage,  to  the  wife  who  is  a  mother  as  well,  im 
presses  me  as  rather  like  the  spliced  arrow  of  the 
Esquimos:  it  is  cemented  together  with  blood.  It 
is  a  solemn  matter.  And  for  the  sake  of  mutter- 
schutz,  if  for  nothing  else,  it  must  be  kept  that  way. 
There  was  a  time,  I  suppose,  when  the  thought  of 
such  a  thing  would  have  taken  my  breath  away, 
would  have  chilled  me  to  the  bone.  But  I'd  been 


4  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

through  my  refining  fires,  in  that  respect,  and  you 
can't  burn  the  prairie  over  twice  in  the  same  season. 
I  tried  to  tell  myself  it  was  the  setting,  and  not  the 
essential  fact,  that  seemed  so  odious.  I  did  my  best 
to  believe  it  wasn't  so  much  that  Duncan  Argyll 
McKail  had  stooped  to  make  advances  to  this  bandy 
legged  she-teacher  whom  I'd  so  charitably  housed  at 
Casa  Grande  since  the  beginning  of  the  year — for 
I'd  long  since  learned  not  to  swallow  the  antique 
claim  that  of  all  terrestrial  carnivora  only  man  and 
the  lion  are  truly  monogamous — but  more  the  fact 
it  had  been  made  such  a  back-stairs  affair  with  no 
solitary  redeeming  touch  of  dignity. 

Dinky-Dunk,  I  suppose,  would  have  laughed  it 
away,  if  I  hadn't  walked  in  on  them  with  their  arms 
about  each  other,  and  the  bandy-legged  one  breath 
ing  her  capitulating  sighs  into  his  ear.  But  there 
w&s  desperation  in  the  eyes  of  Miss  Alsina  Tees- 
Water,  and  it  was  plain  to  see  that  if  my  husband 
had  been  merely  playing  with  fire  it  had  become 
a  much  more  serious  matter  with  the  lady  in  the 
case.  There  was,  in  fact,  something  almost  dignify 
ing  in  that  strickenly  defiant  face  of  hers.  I  was 
almost  sorry  for  her  when  she  turned  and  walked 
white-lipped  out  of  the  room.  What  I  resented  most, 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  5 

AS  I  stood  facing  my  husband,  was  his  paraded  cas- 
ualness,  his  refusal  to  take  a  tragic  situation  trag 
ically.  His  attitude  seemed  to  imply  that  we  were 
about  to  have  a  difference  over  a  small  thing — over 
a  small  thing  with  brown  eyes.  He  could  even  stand 
inspecting  me  with  a  mildly  amused  glance,  and  I 
might  have  forgiven  his  mildness,  I  suppose,  if  it  had 
been  without  amusement,  and  that  amusement  in 
some  way  at  my  expense.  He  even  managed  to  laugh 
as  I  stood  there  staring  at  him.  It  was  neither  an 
honest  nor  a  natural  laugh.  It  merely  gave  me  the 
feeling  that  he  was  trying  to  entrench  himself  behind 
a  raw  mound  of  mirth,  that  any  shelter  was  welcome 
until  the  barrage  was  lifted. 

"And  what  do  you  intend  doing  about  it  ?"  I  asked, 
more  quietly  than  I  had  imagined  possible. 

"What  would  you  suggest?"  he  parried,  as  he  be 
gan  to  feel  in  his  pockets  for  his  pipe. 

And  I  still  had  a  sense,  as  I  saw  the  barricaded 
look  come  into  his  face,  of  entrenchments  being  fran 
tically  thrown  up.  I  continued  to  stare  at  him  as  he 
found  his  pipe  and  proceeded  to  fill  it.  I  even  wrung 
a  ghostly  satisfaction  out  of  the  discovery  that  his 
fingers  weren't  so  steady  as  he  might  have  wished 
them  to  be. 


6  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"I  suppose  you're  trying  to  make  me  feel  like  the 
Wicked  Uncle  edging  away  from  the  abandoned 
Babes  in  the  Woods?"  he  finally  demanded,  as 
though  exasperated  by  my  silence.  He  was  delving 
for  matches  by  this  time,  and  seemed  disappointed 
that  none  was  to  be  found  in  his  pockets.  I  don't 
know  why  he  should  seem  to  recede  from  me,  for  he 
didn't  move  an  inch  from  where  he  stood  with  that 
defensively  mocking  smile  on  his  face.  But  abysmal 
gulfs  of  space  seemed  to  blow  in  like  sea-mists  be 
tween  him  and  me,  desolating  and  lonely  stretches 
of  emptiness  which  could  never  again  be  spanned  by 
the  tiny  bridges  of  hope.  I  felt  alone,  terribly  alone, 
in  a  world  over  which  the  last  fire  had  swept  and  the 
last  rains  had  fallen.  My  throat  tightened  and  my 
eyes  smarted  from  the  wave  of  self-pity  which  washed 
through  my  body.  It  angered  me,  ridiculously,  to 
think  that  I  was  going  to  break  down  at  such  a 
time. 

But  the  more  I  thought  over  it  the  more 
muddled  I  grew.  There  was  something  maddening 
in  the  memory  that  I  was  unable  to  act  as  my  in 
stincts  prompted  me  to  act,  that  I  couldn't,  like 
the  outraged  wife  of  screen  and  story,  walk  promptly 
out  of  the  door  and  slam  it  epochally  shut  after  me. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  7 

But  modern  life  never  quite  lives  up  to  its  fiction. 
And  we  are  never  quite  free,  we  women  who  have 
given  our  hostages  to  fortune,  to  do  as  we  wish.  We 
have  lives  other  than  our  own  to  think  about. 

"But  it's  all  been  so — so  dishonest!"  I  cried  out, 
stopping  myself  in  the  middle  of  a  gesture  which 
might  have  seemed  like  wringing  my  hands. 

That,  apparently,  gave  Dinky-Dunk  something  to 
get  his  teeth  into.  The  neutral  look  went  out  of  his 
eye,  to  be  replaced  by  a  fortifying  stare  of  enmity. 

"I  don't  know  as  it's  any  more  dishonest  than  the 
long-distance  brand  of  the  same  thing !" 

I  knew,  at  once,  what  he  meant.  He  meant  Peter. 
He  meant  poor  old  Peter  Ketley,  whose  weekly  let 
ter,  year  in  and  year  out,  came  as  regular  as  clock 
work  to  Casa  Grande.  Those  letters  came  to  my 
son  Dinkie,  though  it  couldn't  be  denied  they  carried 
many  a  cheering  word  and  many  a  companionable 
message  to  Dinkie's  mother.  But  it  brought  me  up 
short,  to  think  that  my  own  husband  would  try  to 
play  cuttle-fish  with  a  clean-hearted  and  a  clean 
handed  man  like  Peter.  The  wave  that  went  through 
my  body,  on  this  occasion,  was  one  of  rage.  I  tried 
to  say  something,  but  I  couldn't.  The  lion  of  my 
anger  had  me  down,  by  this  time,  with  his  paw  on  my 


8  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

breast.  The  power  of  speech  was  squeezed  out  of 
my  carcass.  I  could  only  stare  at  my  husband  with 
a  denuding  and  devastating  stare  of  incredulity 
touched  with  disgust,  of  abhorrence  skirting  dan 
gerously  close  along  the  margins  of  hate.  And  he 
stared  back,  with  morose  and  watchful  defiance  on 
his  face. 

Heaven  only  knows  how  it  would  have  ended,  if 
that  tableau  hadn't  gone  smash,  with  a  sudden  off 
stage  clatter  and  thump  and  cry  which  reminded  me 
there  were  more  people  in  the  world  than  Chaddie 
McKail  and  her  philandering  old  husband.  For 
during  that  interregnum  of  parental  preoccupation 
Dinkie  and  Poppsy  had  essayed  to  toboggan  down 
the  lower  half  of  the  front-stairs  in  an  empty  drawer 
commandeered  from  my  bedroom  dresser.  Their 
descent,  apparently,  had  been  about  as  precipitate 
as  that  of  their  equally  adventurous  sire  down  the 
treads  of  my  respect,  for  they  had  landed  in  a  heap 
on  the  hardwood  floor  of  the  hall  and  I  found  Dinkie 
with  an  abraded  shin-bone  and  Poppsy  with  a  cut 
lip.  My  Poppsy  was  more  frightened  at  the  sight 
of  blood  than  actually  hurt  by  her  fall,  and  Dinkie 
betrayed  a  not  unnatural  tendency  to  enlarge  on 
his  injuries  in  extenuation  of  his  offense.  But  that 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  9 

suddenly  imposed  demand  for  first-aid  took  my  mind 
out  of  the  darker  waters  in  which  it  had  been  wal 
lowing,  and  by  the  time  I  had  comforted  my  kiddies 
and  completed  my  ministrations  Dinky-Dunk  had 
quietly  escaped  from  the  house  and  my  accusatory 
stares  by  clapping  on  his  hat  and  going  out  to  the 
stables.  .  .  . 

And  that's  the  scene  which  keeps  pacing  back  and 
forth  between  the  bars  of  my  brain  like  a  jaguar  in 
a  circus-cage.  That's  the  scene  I've  been  living  over, 
for  the  last  few  days,  thinking  of  all  the  more  bril 
liant  things  I  might  have  said  and  the  more  expe 
dient  things  I  might  have  done.  And  that's  the  scene 
which  has  been  working  like  yeast  at  the  bottom  of 
my  sodden  batter  of  contentment,  making  me  feel 
that  I'd  swell  up  and  burst,  if  all  that  crazy  ferment 
couldn't  find  some  relief  in  expression.  So  after 
three  long  years  and  more  of  silence  I'm  turning 
back  to  this,  the  journal  of  one  irresponsible  old 
Chaddie  McKail,  who  wanted  so  much  to  be  happy 
and  who  has  in  some  way  missed  the  pot  of  gold 
that  they  told  her  was  to  be  found  at  the  rainbow's 
end. 

It  seems  incredible,  as  I  look  back,  that  more  than 
three  long  years  should  slip  away  without  the  pen- 


10 

ning  of  one  line  in  this,  the  safety-valve  of  my  soul. 
But  the  impulse  to  write  rather  slipped  away  from 
me.  It  wasn't  that  there  was  so  little  to  record,  for 
life  is  always  life.  But  when  it  burns  clearest  it 
seems  to  have  the  trick  of  consuming  its  own  smoke 
and  leaving  so  very  little  ash.  The  crowded  even 
tdnor  of  existence  goes  on,  with  its  tidal  ups  and 
downs,  too  listlessly  busy  to  demand  expression. 
Then  the  shock  of  tempest  comes,  and  it's  only  after 
we're  driven  out  of  them  that  we  realize  we've  been 
drifting  so  long  in  the  doldrums  of  life.  Then  it 
comes  home  to  us  that  there  are  the  Dark  Ages  in 
the  history  of  a  woman  exactly  as  there  were  the 
Dark  Ages  in  the  history  of  Europe.  Life  goes  on 
in  those  Dark  Ages,  but  it  doesn't  feel  the  call  to 
articulate  itself,  to  leave  a  record  of  its  experiences. 
And  that  strikes  me,  as  I  sit  here  and  think  of  it, 
as  about  the  deepest  tragedy  that  can  overtake  any 
thing  on  this  earth.  Nothing,  after  all,  is  sadder 
than  silence,  the  silence  of  dead  civilizations  and  dead 
cities  and  dead  souls.  And  nothing  is  more  costly. 
For  beauty  itself,  in  actual  life,  passes  away,  but 
beauty  lovingly  recorded  by  mortal  hands  endures 
and  goes  down  to  our  children.  And  I  stop  writ 
ing,  at  that  word  of  "children,"  for  miraculously, 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  11 

as  I  repeat  it,  I  see  it  cut  a  window  in  the  unlighted 
house  of  my  heart.  And  that  window  is  the  bright 
little  Gothic  oriel  which  will  always  be  golden  and 
luminous  with  love  and  will  always  send  the  last 
shadow  scurrying  away  from  the  mustiest  corner  of 
my  tower  of  life.  I  have  my  Dinkie  and  my  Poppsy, 
and  nothing  can  take  them  away  from  me.  It's  on 
them  that  I  pin  my  hope. 


Sunday  the  Seventeenth 

I'VE  been  thinking  a  great  deal  over  what's  hap 
pened  this  last  week  or  so.  And  I've  been  trying 
to  reorganize  my  life,  the  same  as  you  put  a  house 
to  rights  after  a  funeral.  But  it  wasn't  a  well- 
ordered  funeral,  in  this  case,  and  I  was  denied  even 
the  tempered  satisfaction  of  the  bereaved  after  the 
finality  of  a  smoothly  conducted  burial.  For  noth 
ing  has  been  settled.  It's  merely  that  Time  has  been 
trying  to  encyst  what  it  can  not  absorb.  I  felt,  for 
a  day  or  two,  that  I  had  nothing  much  to  live  for. 
I  felt  like  a  feather-weight  who'd  faced  a  knock-out. 
I  saw  Pride  go  to  the  mat,  and  take  the  count,  and 
if  I  was  dazed,  for  a  while,  I  suppose  it  was  mostly 
convalescence  from  shock.  Then  I  tightened  my  belt, 
and  reminded  myself  that  it  wasn't  the  first  wallop 
Fate  had  given  me,  and  remembered  that  in  this  life 
you  have  to  adjust  yourself  to  your  environment 
or  be  eliminated  from  the  game.  And  life,  I  suppose, 
has  tamed  me,  as  a  man  who  once  loved  me  said  it 
would  do.  The  older  I  get  the  more  tolerant  I  try 

12 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  13 

to  be,  and  the  more  I  know  of  this  world  the  more 
I  realize  that  Right  is  seldom  all  on  one  side  and 
Wrong  on  the  other.  It's  a  matter  of  give  and  take, 
this  problem  of  traveling  in  double-harness.  I  can 
even  smile  a  little,  as  I  remember  that  college  day  in 
my  teens  when  Matilda-Anne  and  Katrina  and 
Fanny-Rain-in-the-Face  and  myself  solemnly  dis 
cussed  man  and  his  make-up,  over  a  three-pound  box 
of  Maillard's,  and  resolutely  agreed  that  we  would 
surrender  our  hearts  to  no  suitor  over  twenty-six  and 
marry  no  male  who'd  ever  loved  another  woman — • 
not,  at  least,  unless  the  situation  had  become  com- 
pensatingly  romanticized  by  the  death  of  any  such 
lady  preceding  us  in  our  loved  one's  favor.  Little 
we  knew  of  men  and  ourselves  and  the  humiliations 
with  which  life  breaks  the  spirit  of  arrogant  youth! 
For  even  now,  knowing  what  I  know,  I've  been 
doing  my  best  to  cooper  together  a  case  for  my  un 
stable  old  Dinky-Dunk.  I've  been  trying  to  keep 
the  thought  of  poor  dead  Lady  Alicia  out  of  my 
head.  I've  been  wondering  if  there's  any  truth  in 
what  Dinky-Dunk  said,  a  few  weeks  ago,  about  a 
mere  father  being  like  the  male  of  the  warrior-spider 
whom  the  female  of  the  species  stands  ready  to  dine 
upon,  once  she's  assured  of  her  progeny. 


14  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

I  suppose  I  have  given  most  of  my  time  and  atten 
tion  to  my  children.  And  it's  as  perilous,  I  suppose, 
to  give  your  heart  to  a  man  and  then  take  it  even 
partly  away  again  as  it  is  to  give  a  trellis  to  a 
rose-bush  and  then  expect  it  to  stand  alone.  My 
husband,  too,  has  been  restless  and  dissatisfied  with 
prairie  life  during  the  last  year  or  so,  has  been  rock 
ing  in  his  own  doldrums  of  inertia  where  the  sight 
of  even  the  humblest  ship — and  the  Wandering  Sail 
in  this  case  always  seemed  to  me  as  soft  and  shape 
less  as  a  boned  squab-pigeon ! — could  promptly  elicit 
an  answering  signal. 

But  I  strike  a  snag  there,  for  Alsina  has  not  been 
so  boneless  as  I  anticipated.  There  was  an  unlooked- 
for  intensity  in  her  eyes  and  a  mild  sort  of  tragedy 
in  her  voice  when  she  came  and  told  me  that  she 
was  going  to  another  school  in  the  Knee-Hill  coun 
try  and  asked  if  I  could  have  her  taken  in  to  Buck- 
horn  the  next  morning.  Some  one,  of  course,  had 
to  go.  There  was  one  too  many  in  this  prairie  home 
that  must  always  remain  so  like  an  island  dotting 
the  lonely  wastes  of  a  lonely  sea.  And  triangles, 
oddly  enough,  seem  to  flourish  best  in  city  squares. 
But  much  as  I  wanted  to  talk  to  Alsina,  I  was  com 
pelled  to  respect  her  reserve.  I  even  told  her  that 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  15 

Dinkie  would  miss  her  a  great  deal.  She  replied, 
with  a  choke  in  her  voice,  that  he  was  a  wonderful 
child.  That,  of  course,  was  music  to  the  ears  of  his 
mother,  and  my  respect  for  the  tremulous  Miss 
Teeswater  went  up  at  least  ten  degrees.  But  when 
she  added,  without  meeting  my  eye,  that  she  was 
really  fond  of  the  boy,  I  couldn't  escape  the  impres 
sion  that  she  was  edging  out  on  very  thin  ice.  It 
was,  I  think,  only  the  silent  misery  in  her  half- 
averted  face  which  kept  me  from  inquiring  if  sht 
hadn't  rather  made  it  a  family  affair.  But  that, 
second  thought  promptly  told  me,  would  seem  too 
much  like  striking  the  fallen.  And  we  both  seemed 
to  feel,  thereafter,  that  silence  was  best. 

Practically  nothing  passed  between  us,  in  fact, 
until  we  reached  the  station.  I  could  see  that  she 
was  dreading  the  ordeal  of  saying  good-by.  That 
unnamed  sixth  sense  peculiar  to  cab-drivers  and 
waiters  and  married  women  told  me  that  every  mo 
ment  on  the  bald  little  platform  was  being  a  torture 
to  her.  As  the  big  engine  came  lumbering  up  to  a 
standstill  she  gave  me  one  quick  and  searching  look. 
It  was  a  look  I  shall  never  forget.  For,  in  it  was 
a  question  and  something  more  than  a  question.  An 
unworded  appeal  was  there,  and  also  an  unworded 


16  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

protest.  It  got  past  my  outposts  of  reason,  in 
some  way.  It  came  to  me  in  my  bitterness  like  the 
smell  of  lilacs  into  a  sick-room.  I  couldn't  be  cruel 
to  that  poor  crushed  outcast  who  had  suffered  quite 
as  much  from  the  whole  ignoble  affair  as  I  had  suf 
fered.  I  suddenly  held  out  my  hand  to  her,  and  she 
took  it,  with  that  hungry  questioning  look  still  on 
her  face. 

"It's  all  right,"  I  started  to  say.  But  her  head 
suddenly  went  down  between  her  hunched-up  shoul 
ders.  Her  body  began  to  shake  and  tears  gushed 
from  her  eyes.  I  had  to  help  her  to  the  car  steps, 

"It  was  all  my  fault,"  she  said  in  a  strangled  voice, 
between  her  helpless  little  sobs. 

It  was  brave  of  her,  of  course,  and  she  meant  it 
for  the  best.  But  I  wish  she  hadn't  said  it.  Instead 
of  making  everything  easier  for  me,  as  she  intended, 
she  only  made  it  harder.  She  left  me  disturbingly 
conscious  of  ghostly  heroisms  which  transposed 
what  I  had  tried  to  regard  as  essentially  ignoble 
into  some  higher  and  purer  key.  And  she  made  it 
harder  for  me  to  look  at  my  husband,  when  I  got 
home,  with  a  calm  and  collected  eye.  I  felt  suspi 
ciously  like  Lady  Macbeth  after  the  second  murder. 
I  felt  that  we  were  fellow-sharers  of  a  guilt v  secret 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  17 

it  would  never  do  to  drag  too  often  into  the  light 
of  every-day  life. 

But  it  will  no  more  stay  under  cover,  I  find,  than 
a  dab-chick  will  stay  under  water.  It  bobs  up  in 
the  most  unexpected  places,  as  it  did  last  night, 
when  Dinkie  publicly  proclaimed  that  he  was  going 
to  marry  his  Mummy  when  he  got  big. 

"It  would  be  well,  my  son,  not  to  repeat  the  mis 
takes  of  your  father !"  observed  Dinky-Dunk.  And 
having  said  it,  he  relighted  his  quarantining  pipe 
and  refused  to  meet  my  eye.  But  it  didn't  take  a 
surgical  operation  to  get  what  he  meant  into  my 
head.  It  hurt,  in  more  ways  than  one,  for  it  struck 
me  as  suspiciously  like  a  istone  embodied  in  a  snow 
ball — and  even  our  offspring  recognized  this  as  no 
fair  manner  of  fighting. 

"Then  it  impresses  you  as  a  mistake?"  I  demanded, 
seeing  red,  for  the  coyote  in  me,  I'm  afraid,  will 
never  entirely  become  house-dog. 

"Isn't  that  the  way  you  regard  it?"  he  asked,  in 
specting  me  with  a  non-committal  eye. 

I  had  to  bite  my  lip,  to  keep  from  flinging  out  at 
him  the  things  that  were  huddled  back  in  my  heart. 
But  it  was  no  time  for  making  big  war  medicine.  So 
I  got  the  lid  on,  and  held  it  there. 


18  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"My  dear  Dinky-Dunk,"  I  said  with  an  effort  at 
a  gesture  of  weariness,  "I've  long  since  learned  that 
life  can't  be  made  clean,  like  a  cat's  body,  by  the  use 
of  the  tongue  alone!" 

Dinky-Dunk  did  not  look  at  me.  Instead,  he 
turned  to  the  boy  who  was  watching  that  scene  with 
a  small  frown  of  perplexity  on  his  none  too  approv 
ing  face. 

"You  go  up  to  the  nursery,"  commanded  my  hus 
band,  with  more  curtness  than  usual. 

But  before  Dinkie  went  he  slowly  crossed  the  room 
and  kissed  me.  He  did  so  with  a  quiet  resoluteness 
which  was  not  without  its  tacit  touch  of  challenge. 

"You  may  feel  that  way  about  the  use  of  the 
tongue,"  said  my  husband  as  soon  as  we  were  alone, 
"but  I'm  going  to  unload  a  few  things  I've  been  keep 
ing  under  cover." 

He  waited  for  me  to  say  something.  But  I  pre 
ferred  remaining  silent. 

"Of  course,"  he  floundered  on,  "I  don't  want  to 
stop  you  martyrizing  yourself  in  making  a  mountain 
out  of  a  mole-hill.  But  I'm  getting  a  trifle  tired  of 
this  holier-than-thou  attitude.  And " 

"And?"  I  prompted,  when  he  came  to  a  stop  and 
sat  pushing  up  his  brindled  front-hair  until  it  made 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  19 

me  think  of  the  Corean  lion  on  the  library  mantel, 
the  lion  in  pottery  which  we  invariably  spoke  of  as 
the  Dog  of  Fo.  My  wintry  smile  at  that  resemblance 
seemed  to  exasperate  him. 

"What  were  you  going  to  say  ?"  I  quietly  inquired. 

"Oh,  hell!"  he  exclaimed,  with  quite  unexpected 
vigor. 

"I  hope  the  children  are  out  of  hearing,"  I  re 
minded  him,  solemn-eyed. 

"Yes,  the  children !"  he  cried,  catching  at  the 
word  exactly  as  a  drowning  man  catches  at  a  life 
belt.  "The  children!  That's  just  the  root  of  the 
whole  intolerable  situation.  This  hasn't  been  a  home 
for  the  last  three  or  four  years ;  it's  been  nothing  but 
a  nursery.  And  about  all  I've  been  is  a  retriever  for 
a  creche,  a  clod-hopper  to  tiptoe  about  the  sacred 
circle  and  see  to  it  there's  enough  flannel  to  cover 
their  backs  and  enough  food  to  put  into  their  stom 
achs.  I'm  an  accident,  of  course,  an  intruder  to  be 
faced  with  fortitude  and  borne  with  patience." 

"This  sounds  quite  disturbing,"  I  interrupted.  "It 
almost  leaves  me  suspicious  that  you  are  about  to 
emulate  the  rabbit  and  devour  your  young." 

Dinky-Dunk  fixed  me  with  an  accusatory  finger. 
"And  the  fact  that  you  can  get  humor  out  of  it 


20  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

shows  me  just  how  far  it  has  gone,"  he  cried  with  a 
bitterness  which  quickly  enough  made  me  sober  again. 
"And  I  could  stand  being  deliberately  shut  out  of 
your  life,  and  shut  out  of  their  lives  as  far  as  you  can 
manage  it,  but  I  can't  see  that  it's  doing  either  them 
or  you  any  particular  good." 

"But  I  am  responsible  for  the  way  in  which  those 
children  grow  up,"  I  said,  quite  innocent  of  the 
double  entendre  which  brought  a  dark  flush  to  my 
husband's  none  too  happy  face. 

"And  I  suppose  I'm  not  to  contaminate  them?" 
he  demanded. 

"Haven't  you  done  enough  along  that  line?"  I 
asked. 

He  swung  about,  at  that,  with  something  dan 
gerously  like  hate  on  his  face. 

"Whose  children  are  they?"  he  challenged. 

"You  are  their  father,"  I  quietly  acknowledged. 
It  rather  startled  me  to  find  Dinky-Dunk  regarding 
himself  as  a  fur  coat  and  my  offspring  as  moth-eggs 
which  I  had  laid  deep  in  the  pelt  of  his  life,  where 
we  were  slowly  but  surely  eating  the  glory  out  of  that 
garment  and  leaving  it  as  bald  as  a  prairie  dog's 
belly. 

"Well,  you  give  very  little  evidence  of  it !" 


21 

"You  can't  expect  me  to  turn  a  cart-wheel,  surely, 
every  time  I  remember  it?"  was  my  none  too  gracious 
inquiry.  Then  I  sat  down.  "But  what  is  it  you  want 
me  to  do?"  I  asked,  as  I  sat  studying  his  face,  and  I 
felt  sorriest  for  him  because  he  felt  sorry  for  him 
self. 

"That's  exactly  the  point,"  he  averred.  "There 
doesn't  seem  anything  to  do.  But  this  can't  go  on 
forever." 

"No,"  I  acknowledged.  "It  seems  too  much  like 
history  repeating  itself." 

His  head  went  down,  at  that,  and  it  was  quite  a 
long  time  before  he  looked  up  at  me  again. 

"I  don't  suppose  you  can  see  it  from  my  side  of 
the  fence?"  he  asked  with  a  disturbing  new  note  of 
humility  in  his  voice. 

"Not  when  you  force  me  to  stay  on  the  fence,"  I 
told  him.  He  seemed  to  realize,  as  he  sat  there 
slowly  moving  his  head  up  and  down,  that  no  further 
advance  was  to  be  made  along  that  line.  So  he  took 
a  deep  breath  and  sat  up. 

"Something  will  have  to  be  done  about  getting  a 
new  teacher  for  that  school,"  he  said  with  an  appo- 
siteness  which  was  only  too  painfully  apparent. 

"I've  already  spoken  to  two  of  the  trustees,"  I  told 


22  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

him.  "They're  getting  a  teacher  from  the  Peg.  It's 
to  be  a  man  this  time." 

Instead  of  meeting  my  eye,  he  merely  remarked: 
"That'll  be  better  for  the  boy!" 

"In  what  way?"  I  inquired. 

"Because  I  don't  think  too  much  petticoat  is  good 
for  any  boy,"  responded  my  lord  and  master. 

"Big  or  little !"  I  couldn't  help  amending,  in  spite 
of  all  my  good  intentions. 

Dinky-Dunk  ignored  the  thrust,  though  it  plainly 
took  an  effort. 

"There  are  times  when  even  kindness  can  be  a 
sort  of  cruelty,"  he  patiently  and  somewhat  plati- 
tudinously  pursued. 

"Then  I  wish  somebody  would  ill-treat  me  along 
that  line,"  I  interjected.  And  this  time  he  smiled, 
though  it  was  only  for  a  moment. 

"Supposing  we  stick  to  the  children,"  he  sug 
gested. 

"Of  course,"  I  agreed.  "And  since  you've  brought 
the  matter  up  I  can't  help  telling  you  that  I  always 
felt  that  my  love  for  my  children  is  the  one  redeem 
ing  thing  in  my  life." 

"Thanks,"  said  my  husband,  with  a  wince. 

"Please  don't  misunderstand  me.     I'm  merely  try- 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  23 

ing  to  say  that  a  mother's  love  for  her  children  has  to 
be  one  of  the  strongest  and  holiest  things  in  this  hard 
old  world  of  ours.  And  it  seems  only  natural  to  me 
that  a  woman  should  consider  her  children  first,  and 
plan  for  them,  and  make  sacrifices  for  them,  and  fight 
for  them  if  she  has  to." 

"It's  so  natural,  in  fact,"  remarked  Dinky-Dunk, 
"that  it  has  been  observed  in  even  the  Bengal  tigress." 

"It  is  my  turn  to  thank  you,"  I  acknowledged, 
after  giving  his  statement  a  moment  or  two  of 
thought. 

"But  we're  getting  away  from  the  point  again," 
proclaimed  my  husband.  "I've  been  trying  to  tell 
you  that  children  are  like  rabbits:  It's  only  fit  and 
proper  they  should  be  cared  for,  but  they  can't  thrive, 
and  they  can't  even  live,  if  they're  handled  too  much." 

"I  haven't  observed  any  alarming  absence  of  health 
in  my  children,"  I  found  the  courage  to  say.  But 
a  tightness  gathered  about  my  heart,  for  I  could 
sniff  what  was  coming. 

"They  may  be  all  right,  as  far  as  that  goes,"  per 
sisted  their  lordly  parent.  "But  what  I  say  is,  too 
much  cuddling  and  mollycoddling  isn't  good  for  that 
boy  of  yours,  or  anybody  else's  boy."  And  he  pro 
ceeded  to  explain  that  my  Dinkie  was  an  ordinary, 


24  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

every-day,  normal  child  and  should  be  accepted  and 
treated  as  such  or  we'd  have  a  temperamental  little 
bounder  on  our  hands. 

I  knew  that  my  boy  wasn't  abnormal.  But  I  knew, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  he  was  an  exceptionally  im 
pressionable  and  sensitive  child.  And  I  couldn't  be 
sorry  for  that,  for  if  there's  anything  I  abhor  in  this 
world  it's  torpor.  And  whatever  he  may  have  been, 
nothing  could  shake  me  in  my  firm  conviction  that  a 
child's  own  mother  is  the  best  person  to  watch  over 
his  growth  and  shape  his  character. 

"But  what  is  all  this  leading  up  to  ?"  I  asked,  steel 
ing  myself  for  the  unwelcome. 

"Simply  to  what  I've  already  told  you  on  several 
occasions,"  was  my  husband's  answer.  "That  it's 
about  time  this  boy  of  ours  was  bundled  off  to  a 
boarding-school." 

I  sat  back,  trying  to  picture  my  home  and  my 
life  without  Dinkie.  But  it  was  unbearable.  It  was 
unthinkable. 

"I  shall  never  agree  to  that,"  I  quietly  retorted. 

"Why  ?"  asked  my  husband,  with  a  note  of  triumph 
which  I  resented. 

"For  one  thing,  because  he  is  still  a  child,  because 
he  is  too  young,"  I  contended,  knowing  that  I  could 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  25 

never  agree  with  Dinky-Dunk  in  his  thoroughly  Eng 
lish  ideas  of  education  even  while  I  remembered  how 
he  had  once  said  that  the  greatness  of  England  de 
pended  on  her  public-schools,  such  as  Harrow  and 
Eton  and  Rugby  and  Winchester,  and  that  she  had 
been  the  best  colonizer  in  the  world  because  her  boys 
had  been  taken  young  and  taught  not  to  overvalue 
home  ties,  had  been  made  manlier  by  getting  off 
with  their  own  kind  instead  of  remaining  hitched  to 
an  apron-string. 

"And  you  prefer  keeping  him  stuck  out  here  on 
the  prairie?"  demanded  Dinky-Dunk. 

"The  prairie  has  been  good  enough  for  his  parents, 
this  last  seven  or  eight  years,"  I  contended. 

"It  hasn't  been  good  enough  for  me,"  my  husband 
cried  out  with  quite  unlooked-for  passion.  "And 
I've  about  had  my  fill  of  it !" 

"Where  would  you  prefer  going?"  I  asked,  trying 
to  speak  as  quietly  as  I  could. 

"That's  something  I'm  going  to  find  out  as  soon  as 
the  chance  comes,"  he  retorted  with  a  slow  and  embit 
tered  emphasis  which  didn't  add  any  to  my  peace  of 
mind. 

"Then  why  cross  our  bridges,"  I  suggested,  "until 
we  come  to  them?" 


26  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"But  you're  not  looking  for  bridges,"  he  chal 
lenged.  "You  don't  want  to  see  anything  beyond 
living  like  Doukhobours  out  here  on  the  edge  of 
Nowhere  and  remembering  that  you've  got  your 
precious  offspring  here  under  your  wing  and  won 
dering  how  many  bushels  of  Number-One-Hard  it  will 
take  to  buy  your  Dinkie  a  riding  pinto !" 

"Aren't  you  rather  tired  to-night?"  I  asked  with 
all  the  patience  I  could  command. 

"Yes,  and  I'm  talking  about  the  thing  that  makes 
me  tired.  For  you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  you've 
made  that  boy  of  yours  a  sort  of  anesthetic.  You 
put  him  on  like  a  nose-cap,  and  forget  the  world. 
He's  about  all  you  remember  to  think  about.  Why, 
when  you  look  at  the  clock,  nowadays,  it  isn't  ten 
minutes  to  twelve.  It's  always  Dinkie  minutes  to 
Dink.  When  you  read  a  book  you're  only  reading 
about  what  your  Dinkie  might  have  done  or  what 
your  Dinkie  is  some  day  to  write.  When  you  picture 
the  Prime  Minister  it's  merely  your  Dinkie  grown 
big,  laying  down  the  law  to  a  House  of  Parliament 
made  up  of  other  Dinkies,  rows  and  rows  of  'em. 
When  the  sun  shines  you're  wondering  whether  it's 
warm  enough  for  your  Dinkie  to  walk  in,  and  when 
the  snow  begins  to  melt  you're  wondering  whether 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  27 

it's  soft  enough  for  the  beloved  Dinkie  to  mold  into 
snowballs.  When  you  see  a  girl  you  at  once  get 
busy  speculating  over  whether  or  not  she'll  ever  be 
beautiful  enough  for  your  Dinkie,  and  when  one  of 
the  Crowned  Heads  of  Europe  announces  the  alliance 
of  its  youngest  princess  you  fall  to  pondering  if 
Dinkie  wouldn't  have  made  her  a  better  husband. 
And  when  the  flowers  come  out  in  your  window-box 
you  wonder  if  they're  fair  enough  to  bloom  beside 
your  Dinkie.  I  don't  suppose  I  ever  made  a  hay 
stack  that  you  didn't  wonder  whether  it  wasn't  going 
to  be  a  grand  place  for  Dinkie  to  slide  down.  And 
when  Dinkie  draws  a  goggle-eyed  man  on  his  scribbler 
you  see  Michael  Angelo  totter  and  Titian  turn 
in  his  grave.  And  when  Dinkie  writes  a  composition 
of  thirty  crooked  lines  on  the  landing  of  Hengist  you 
feel  that  fate  did  Hume  a  mean  trick  in  letting  hfm 
pass  away  before  inspecting  that  final  word  in  his 
torical  record.  And  heaven's  just  a  row  of  Dinkies 
with  little  gold  harps  tucked  under  their  wings.  And 
you  think  you're  breathing  air,  but  all  you're  breath 
ing  is  Dinkies,  millions  and  millions  of  etherealized 
Dinkies.  And  when  you  read  about  the  famine  in 
China  you  inevitably  and  adroitly  hitch  the  death 
of  seven  thousand  Chinks  in  Yangchow  on  to  the 


28  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

interests  of  your  immortal  offspring.  And  I  suppose 
Rome  really  came  into  being  for  the  one  ultimate  end 
that  an  immortal  young  Dinkic  might  possess  his  full 
degree  of  Dinkiness  and  the  glory  that  was  Greece 
must  have  been  merely  the  tomtoms  tuning  up  for 
the  finished  dance  of  our  Dinkie's  grandeur.  Day 
and  night,  it's  Dinkie,  just  Dinkie!" 

I  waited  until  he  was  through.  I  waited,  heavy  of 
heart,  until  his  foolish  fires  of  revolt  had  burned 
themselves  out.  And  it  didn't  seem  to  add  to  his 
satisfaction  to  find  that  I  could  inspect  him  with  a 
quiet  and  slightly  commiserative  eye. 

"You  are  accusing  me,"  I  finally  told  him,  "of 
something  I'm  proud  of.  And  I'm  afraid  I'll  always 
be  guilty  of  caring  for  my  own  son." 

He  turned  on  me  with  a  sort  of  heavy  triumph. 

"Well,  it's  something  that  you'll  jolly  well  pay  the 
piper  for,  some  day,"  he  announced. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that?"  I  demanded. 

"I  mean  that  nothing  much  is  ever  gained  by  let 
ting  the  maternal  instinct  run  over.  And  that's 
exactly  what  you're  doing.  You're  trying  to  tie 
Dinkie  .to  your  side,  when  you  can  no  more  tie  him 
up  than  you  can  tie  up  a  sunbeam.  You  could  keep 
him  close  enough  to  you,  of  course,  when  he  was  small. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  29 

But  he's  bound  to  grow  away  from  you  as  he  gets 
bigger,  just  as  I  grew  away  from  my  mother  and  you 
once  grew  away  from  yours.  It's  a  natural  law,  and 
there's  no  use  crocking  your  knees  on  it.  The  boy's 
got  his  own  life  to  live,  and  you  can't  live  it  for  him. 
It  won't  be  long,  now,  before  you  begin  to  notice 
those  quiet  withdrawals,  those  slippings-back  into  his 
own  shell  of  self-interest.  And  unless  you  realize 
what  it  means,  it's  going  to  hurt.  And  unless  you 
reckon  on  that  in  the  way  you  order  your  life  you're 
not  only  going  to  be  a  very  lonely  old  lady  but 
you're  going  to  bump  into  a  big  hole  where  you 
thought  the  going  was  smoothest!" 

I  sat  thinking  this  over,  with  a  ton  of  lead  where 
my  heart  should  have  been. 

"I've  already  bumped  into  a  big  hole  where  1 
thought  the  going  was  smoothest,"  I  finally  ob 
served. 

My  husband  looked  at  me  and  then  looked  away 
again. 

"I  was  hoping  we  could  fill  that  up  and  forget  it," 
he  ventured  in  a  valorously  timid  tone  which  made  it 
hard,  for  reasons  I  couldn't  quite  fathom,  to  keep 
my  throat  from  tightening.  But  I  sat  there,  shaking 
my  head  from  side  to  side. 


30 

"I've  got  to  love  something,"  I  found  myself  pro 
testing.  "And  the  children  seem  all  that  is  left." 

"How  about  me?"  asked  my  husband,  with  his 
acidulated  and  slightly  one-sided  smile. 

"You've  changed,  Dinky-Dunk,"  was  all  I  could 
say. 

"But  some  day,"  he  contended,  "you  may  wake  up 
to  the  fact  that  I'm  still  a  human  being." 

"I've  wakened  up  to  the  fact  that  you're  a  differ 
ent  sort  of  human  being  than  I  had  thought." 

"Oh,  we're  all  very  much  alike,  once  you  get  our 
number,"  asserted  my  husband. 

"You  mean  men  are,"  I  amended. 

"I  mean  that  if  men  can't  get  a  little  warmth  and 
color  and  sympathy  in  the  home-circle  they're  going 
to  edge  about  until  they  find  a  substitute  for  it,  no 
matter  how  shoddy  it  may  be,"  contended  Dinky- 
Dunk. 

"But  isn't  that  a  hard  and  bitter  way  of  writing 
life  down  to  one's  own  level?"  I  asked,  trying  to 
swallow  the  choke  that  wouldn't  stay  down  in  my 
throat. 

"Well,  I  can't  see  that  we  get  much  ahead  by 
trying  to  sentimentalize  the  situation,"  he  said,  with 
a  gesture  that  seemed  one  of  frustration. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  SI 

We  sat  staring  at  each  other,  and  again  I  had  the 
feeling  of  abysmal  gulfs  of  space  intervening  between 
us. 

"Is  that  all  you  can  say  about  it?"  I  asked,  with 
a  foolish  little  gulp  I  couldn't  control. 

"Isn't  it  enough?"  demanded  Dinky -Dunk.  And  I 
knew  that  nothing  was  to  be  gained,  that  night,  by 
the  foolish  and  futile  clash  of  words. 


Tuesday   the  Twenty-Third 

I'VE  been  doing  a  good  deal  of  thinking  over  what 
Dinky-Dunk  said.  I  have  been  trying  to  see  things 
from  his  standpoint.  By  a  sort  of  mental  ju-jutsu 
I've  even  been  trying  to  justify  what  I  can't  quite 
understand  in  him.  But  it's  no  use.  There's  one 
bald,  hard  fact  I  can't  escape,  no  matter  how  I  dig 
my  old  ostrich-beak  of  instinct  under  the  sands  of 
self-deception.  There's  one  cold-blooded  truth  that 
will  have  to  be  faced.  My  husband  is  no  longer  in 
love  with  me.  Whatever  else  may  have  happened,  I 
have  lost  my  heart-hold  on  Duncan  Argyll  McKail. 
I  am  still  his  wife,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  and  the 
mother  of  his  children.  We  still  live  together,  and, 
from  force  of  habit,  if  from  nothing  else,  go  through 
the  familiar  old  rites  of  daily  communion.  He  sits 
across  the  table  from  me  when  I  eat,  and  talks  cas 
ually  enough  of  the  trivially  momentous  problems  of 
the  minute,  or  he  reads  in  his  slippers  before  the  fire 
while  I  do  my  sewing  within  a  spool-toss  of  him.  But 
a  row  of  invisible  assegais  stand  leveled  between  his 

32 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  33 

heart  and  mine.  A  slow  glacier  of  green-iced  indif- 
ferency  shoulders  in  between  us ;  and  gone  forever 
is  the  wild-flower  aroma  of  youth,  the  singing  spirit 
of  April,  the  mysterious  light  that  touched  our  world 
with  wonder.  He  is  merely  a  man,  drawing  on  to 
middle  age,  and  I  am  a  woman,  no  longer  young. 
Gone  now  are  the  spring  floods  that  once  swept  us 
together.  Gone  now  is  the  flame  of  adoration  that 
burned  clean  our  altar  of  daily  intercourse  and  left 
us  blind  to  the  weaknesses  we  were  too  happy  to 
remember.  For  there  was  a  time  when  we  loved 
each  other.  I  know  that  as  well  as  Duncan  does. 
But  it  died  away,  that  ghostly  flame.  It  went  out  like 
a  neglected  fire.  And  blowing  on  dead  ashes  can 
never  revive  the  old-time  glow. 

"So  they  were  married  and  lived  happy  ever  after 
ward!"  That  is  the  familiar  ending  to  the  fairy 
tales  I  read  over  and  over  again  to  my  Dinkie  and 
Poppsy.  But  they  are  fairy-tales.  For  who  lives 
happy  ever  afterward?  First  love  chloroforms  us, 
for  a  time,  and  we  try  to  hug  to  our  bosoms  the 
illusion  that  Heaven  itself  is  only  a  sort  of  endless 
honeymoon  presided  over  by  Lohengrin  marches. 
But  the  anesthetic  wears  away  and  we  find  that  life 
isn't  a  bed  of  roses  but  a  rough  field  that  rewards  us 


34  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

as  we  till  it,  with  here  and  there  the  cornflower  of 
happiness  laughing  unexpectedly  up  at  us  out  of  our 
sober  acres  of  sober  wheat.  And  often  enough  we 
don't  know  happiness  when  we  see  it.  We  assuredly 
find  it  least  where  we  look  for  it  most.  I  can't  even 
understand  why  we're  equipped  with  such  a  hunger 
for  it.  But  I  find  myself  trending  more  and  more 
to  that  cynic  philosophy  which  defines  happiness  as 
the  absence  of  pain.  The  absence  of  pain — that  is 
a  lot  to  ask  for,  in  this  life ! 

I  wonder  if  Dinky-Dunk  is  right  in  his  implication 
that  I  am  getting  hard?  There  are  times,  I  know, 
when  I  grate  on  him,  when  he  would  probably  give 
anything  to  get  away  from  me.  Yet  here  we  are, 
linked  together  like  two  convicts.  And  I  don't  believe 
I'm  as  hard  as  my  husband  accuses  me  of  being. 
However  macadamized  they  may  have  made  life  for 
me,  there's  at  least  one  soft  spot  in  my  heart,  one 
garden  under  the  walls  of  granite.  And  that's  the 
spot  which  my  two  children  fill,  which  my  children 
keep  green,  which  my  children  keep  holy.  It's  them 
I  think  of,  when  I  think  of  the  future — when  I  should 
at  least  be  thinking  a  little  of  my  grammar  and 
remembering  that  the  verb  "to  be"  takes  the  nom 
inative,  just  as  discontented  husbands  seem  to  take 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  35 

the  initiative!  That's  why  I  can't  quite  find  the 
courage  to  ask  for  freedom.  I  have  seen  enough  of 
life  to  know  what  the  smash-up  of  a  family  means  to 
its  toddlers.  And  I  want  my  children  to  have  a 
chance.  They  can't  have  that  chance  without  at 
least  two  things.  One  is  the  guardianship  of  home 
life,  and  the  other  is  that  curse  of  modern  times 
known  as  money.  We  haven't  prospered  as  we  had 
hoped  to,  but  heaven  knows  I've  kept  an  eagle  eye 
on  that  savings-account  of  mine,  in  that  absurdly  new 
and  resplendent  red-brick  bank  in  Buckhorn.  Pa 
tiently  I've  fed  it  with  my  butter  and  egg  money, 
joyfully  I've  seen  it  grow  with  my  meager  Nitrate 
dividends,  and  grimly  I've  made  it  bigger  with  every 
loose  dollar  I  could  lay  my  hands  on.  There's  no 
heroism  in  my  going  without  things  I  may  have 
thought  I  needed,  just  as  there  can  be  little  nobility 
in  my  sticking  to  a  husband  who  no  longer  loves  me. 
For  it's  not  Chaddie  McKail  who  counts  now,  but  her 
chicks.  And  I'll  have  to  look  for  my  reward  through 
them,  for  I'm  like  Romanes'  rat  now,  too  big  to  get 
into  the  bottle  of  cream,  but  wary  enough  to  know 
I  can  dine  from  a  tail  still  small  enough  for  insertion. 
I'm  merely  a  submerged  prairie-hen  with  the  best 
part  of  her  life  behind  her. 


36  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 


it  bothers  me,  what  Duncan  says  about  my 
always  thinking  of  little  Dinkic  first.  And  I'm 
afraid  I  do,  though  it  seems  neither  right  nor  fair. 
I  suppose  it's  because  he  was  my  first-born  —  and 
having  come  first  in  my  life  he  must  come  first  in  my 
thoughts.  I  was  made  to  love  somebody  —  and  my 
husband  doesn't  seem  to  want  me  to  love  him.  So 
he  has  driven  me  to  centering  my  thoughts  on  the 
child.  I've  got  to  have  something  to  warm  up  to. 
And  any  love  I  may  lavish  on  this  prairie-chick  of 
mine,  who  has  to  face  life  with  the  lack  of  so  many 
things,  will  not  only  be  a  help  to  the  boy,  but  will  be 
a  help  to  me,  the  part  of  Me  that  I'm  sometimes  so 
terribly  afraid  of. 

Yet  I  can't  help  wondering  if  Duncan  has  any 
excuses  for  claiming  that  it's  personal  selfishness 
which  prompts  me  to  keep  my  boy  close  to  my  side. 
And  am  I  harming  him,  without  knowing  it,  in  keep 
ing  him  here  under  my  wing?  Schools  are  all  right, 
in  a  way,  but  surely  a  good  mother  can  do  as  much  in 
the  molding  of  a  boy's  mind  as  a  boarding-school 
with  a  file  of  Ph.D.'s  on  its  staff.  But  am  I  a  good 
mother?  And  should  I  trust  myself,  in  a  matter  like 
this,  to  my  own  feelings?  Men,  in  so  many  things, 
are  better  judges  than  women.  Yet  it  has  just 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  37 

occurred  to  me  that  all  men  do  not  think  alike.  I've 
been  sitting  back  and  wondering  what  kindly  old 
Peter  would  say  about  it.  And  I've  decided  to  write 
Peter  and  ask  what  he  advises.  He'll  tell  the  truth, 
I  know,  for  Peter  is  as  honest  as  the  day  is  long.  .  .  . 
I've  just  been  up  to  make  sure  the  children  were 
properly  covered  in  bed.  And  it  disturbed  me  a 
little  to  find  that  without  even  thinking  about  it  I 
went  to  Dinkie  first.  It  seemed  like  accidental  cor- 
roboration  of  all  that  Duncan  has  been  saying.  But 
I  stood  studying  him  as  he  lay  there  asleep.  It 
frightened  me  a  little,  to  find  him  so  big.  If  it's  true, 
as  Duncan  threatens,  that  time  will  tend  to  turn 
him  away  from  me,  it's  something  that  I'm  going  to 
fight  tooth  and  nail.  And  I've  seen  no  sign  of  it,  as 
yet.  With  every  month  and  every  year  that's  added 
to  his  age  he  grows  more  companionable,  more  able 
to  bridge  the  chasm  between  two  human  souls.  We 
have  more  interests  in  common,  more  things  to  talk 
about.  And  day  by  day  Dinkie  is  reaching  up  to  my 
clumsily  mature  way  of  looking  at  life.  He  can 
come  to  me  with  his  problems,  knowing  I'll  always 
give  him  a  hearing,  just  as  he  used  to  come  to  me 
with  his  baby  cuts  and  bruises,  knowing  they  would 
be  duly  kissed  and  cared  for.  Yet  some  day,  I  have 


38  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

just  remembered,  he  may  have  problems  that  can't 
be  brought  to  me.  But  that  day,  please  God,  I  shall 
defer  as  long  as  possible.  Already  we  have  our  own 
little  secrets  and  private  compacts  and  understand 
ings.  I  don't  want  my  boy  to  be  a  mollycoddle.  But 
I  want  him  to  have  his  chance  in  the  world.  I  want 
him  to  be  somebody.  I  can't  reconcile  myself  to  the 
thought  of  him  growing  up  to  wear  moose-mittens 
and  shoe-packs  and  stretching  barb-wire  in  blue- 
jeans  and  riding  a  tractor  across  a  prairie  back- 
township.  I  refuse  to  picture  him  getting  bent  and 
gray  wringing  a  livelihood  out  of  an  over-cropped 
ranch  fourteen  miles  away  from  a  post-office  and  a 
world  away  from  the  things  that  make  life  most  worth 
living.  If  he  were  an  ordinary  boy,  I  might  be  led 
to  think  differently.  But  my  Dinkie  is  not  an  ordi 
nary  boy.  There's  a  spark  of  the  unusual,  of  the 
exceptional,  in  that  laddie.  And  I  intend  to  fan 
that  spark,  whatever  the  cost  may  be,  until  it  breaks 
out  into  genius. 


Suaiday  the  Twenty-Eighth 

I'VE  had  scant  time  for  introspection  during  the 
last  five  days,  for  Struthers  has  been  in  bed  with 
lumbago,  and  the  weight  of  the  housework  reverted 
to  me.  But  Whinstane  Sandy  brought  his  precious 
bottle  of  Universal  Ointment  in  from  the  bunk-house, 
and  while  that  fiery  mixture  warmed  her  lame  back, 
the  thought  of  its  origin  probably  warmed  her  lonely 
heart.  I  have  suddenly  wakened  up  to  the  fact  that 
Struthers  is  getting  on  a  bit.  She  is  still  the  same 
efficient  and  self-obliterating  mainstay  of  the  kitchen 
that  she  ever  was,  but  she  grows  more  "sot"  in  her 
ways,  more  averse  to  any  change  in  her  daily  routine, 
and  more  despairing  of  ever  finally  and  completely 
capturing  that  canny  old  Scotsman  whom  we  still  so 
affectionately  designate  as  Whinnie,  in  short  for 
Whinstane  Sandy.  Whinnie,  I'm  afraid,  still  nurses 
the  fixed  idea  that  everything  in  petticoats  and  as  yet 
unwedded  is  after  him.  And  it  is  only  by  walking 
with  the  utmost  circumspection  that  he  escapes  their 

39 


40  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

wiles  and  by  maintaining  an  unbroken  front  with 
stands  their  unseemly  advances. 

The  new  school-teacher  has  arrived,  and  is  to  live 
with  us  here  at  Casa  Grande.  I  have  my  reasons  for 
this.  In  the  first  place,  it  will  be  a  help  to  Dinkie  in 
his  studies.  In  the  second  place,  it  means  that  the 
teacher  can  pack  my  boy  back  and  forth  to  school, 
in  bad  weather,  and  next  month  when  Poppsy  joins 
the  ranks  of  the  learners,  can  keep  a  more  personal 
eye  on  that  little  tot's  movements.  And  in  the  third 
place  the  mere  presence  of  another  male  at  Casa 
Grande  seems  to  dilute  the  acids  of  home  life. 

Gershom  Binks  is  the  name  of  this  new  teacher,  and 
I  have  just  learned  that  in  the  original  Hebrew 
"Gershom"  not  inappropriately  means  "a  stranger 
there."  He  is  a  sophomore  (a  most  excellent  word, 
that,  when  you  come  to  inquire  into  its  etymology!) 
from  the  University  of  Minnesota  and  is  compelled  to 
teach  the  young  idea,  for  a  time,  to  accumulate  suf 
ficient  funds  to  complete  his  course,  which  he  wants 
to  do  at  Ann  Arbor.  And  Gershom  is  a  very  tall 
and  very  thin  and  very  short-sighted  young  man, 
with  an  Adam's  apple  that  works  up  and  down  with 
a  two-inch  plunge  over  the  edge  of  his  collar  when  he 
talks — which  he  does  somewhat  extensively.  He  wears 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  41 

glasses  with  big  bulging  lenses,  glasses  which  tend  to 
hide  a  pair  of  timid  and  brown-October-aleish  eyes 
with  real  kindliness  in  them.  He  looks  ill-nourished, 
but  I  can  detect  nothing  radically  wrong  with  his 
appetite.  It's  merely  that,  like  Cassius,  he  thinks  too 
much.  And  I'm  going  to  fatten  that  boy  up  a  bit, 
before  the  year  is  out,  or  know  the  reason  why.  He 
may  be  a  trifle  self-conscious  and  awkward,  but  he's 
also  amazingly  clean  of  both  body  and  mind,  and  it 
will  be  no  hardship,  I  know,  to  have  him  under  our 
roof.  And  for  all  his  devotion  to  Science,  he  reads 
his  Bible  every  night — which  is  more  than  Chaddie 
McKail  does !  He  rather  took  the  wind  out  of  my 
sails  by  demanding,  the  first  morning  at  breakfast, 
if  I  knew  that  one  half-ounce  of  the  web  of  the  spider 
• — the  arachnid  of  the  order  Araneida,  he  explained — 
if  stretched  out  in  a  straight  line  would  reach  from 
the  city  of  Chicago  to  the  city  of  Paris.  I  told  him 
that  this  was  a  most  wonderful  and  a  most  interest 
ing  piece  of  information  and  hoped  that  some  day  we 
could  verify  it  by  actual  test.  Yet  when  I  inquired 
whether  he  meant  merely  the  environs  of  the  city  of 
Paris,  or  the  very  heart  of  the  city  such  as  the  Place 
de  1'Opera,  he  studied  me  with  the  meditative  eye 
with  which  Huxley  must  have  once  studied  beetles. 


42  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Dinky-Dunk,  I  notice,  is  as  restive  as  a  bull-moose 
in  black-fly  season.  He's  doing  his  work  on  the  land, 
as  about  every  ranch-owner  has  to,  whether  he's  hap 
pily  married  or  not,  but  he's  doing  it  without  any 
undue  impression  of  its  epical  importance.  I  heard 
him  observe,  yesterday,  that  if  he  could  only  get  his 
hands  on  enough  ready  money  he'd  like  to  swing  into 
land  business  in  a  live  center  like  Calgary.  He  has 
a  friend  there,  apparently,  who  has  just  made  a 
clean-up  in  city  real  estate  and  bought  his  wife  a 
Detroit  Electric  and  built  a  home  for  himself  that 
cost  forty  thousand  dollars.  I  reminded  Dinky- 
Dunk,  when  he  had  finished,  that  we  really  must  have 
a  new  straining-mesh  in  the  milk-separator.  He 
merely  looked  at  me  with  a  sour  and  morose  eye  as 
he  got  up  and  went  out  to  his  team. 

Surely  these  men-folks  are  a  dissatisfied  lot !  Ger- 
shom  to-night  complained  that  his  own  name  of 
"Gershom  Binks"  impressed  him  as  about  the  ugliest 
name  that  was  ever  hitched  on  to  a  scholar  and  a 
gentlemen.  And  later  on,  after  I'd  opened  my  piano 
and  tried  to  console  myself  with  a  tu'penny  draught 
of  Grieg,  he  inspected  the  instrument  and  informed 
me  that  it  was  really  evolved  from  the  six-stringed 
harps  of  the  fourth  Egyptian  dynasty,  which  in  the 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  43 

fifth  dynasty  was  made  with  a  greatly  enlarged  base, 
thus  giving  the  rudimentary  beginning  of  a  sound 
board. 

I  am  learning  a  lot  from  Gershom !  And  so  are  my 
kiddies,  for  that  matter.  I  begin,  in  fact,  to  feel 
like  royalty  with  a  private  tutor,  for  every  night 
now  Dinkie  and  Poppsy  and  Gershom  sit  about  the 
living-room  table  and  drink  of  the  founts  of  wisdom. 
But  we  have  a  teacher  here  who  loves  to  teach.  And 
he  is  infinitely  patient  and  kind  with  my  little  tod 
dlers.  Dinkie  already  asks  him  questions  without 
number,  while  Poppsy  gratefully  but  decorously 
vamps  him  with  her  infantine  gazes.  Then  Gershom 
— Heaven  bless  his  scholastic  old  high-browed  solem 
nity — has  just  assured  me  that  Dinkie  betrays  many 
evidences  of  an  exceptionally  bright  mind. 


Friday  the  Second 

MY  husband  yesterday  accused  me  of  getting  moss- 
backed.  He  had  been  harping  on  the  city  string 
again  and  asked  me  if  I  intended  to  live  and  die  a 
withered  beauty  on  a  back-trail  ranch. 

That  "withered  beauty"  hurt,  though  I  did  my 
best  to  ignore  it,  for  the  time  at  least.  And  Dinky- 
Dunk  went  on  to  say  that  it  struck  him  as  one  of 
life's  little  ironies  that  /  should  want  to  stick  to  the 
sort  of  life  we  were  leading,  remembering  what  I'd 
come  from. 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  told  him,  "it's  terribly  hard  to 
explain  exactly  how  I  feel  about  it  all.  I  suppose  I 
could  never  make  you  see  it  as  I  see  it.  But  it's  a 
feeling  like  loyalty,  loyalty  to  the  land  that's  given  us 
what  we  have.  And  it's  also  a  feeling  of  disliking  to 
see  one  old  rule  repeating  itself:  what  has  once  been 
a  crusade  becoming  merely  a  business.  To  turn  and 
leave  our  land  now,  it  seems  to  me,  would  make  us 
too  much  like  those  soulless  soil-robbers  you  used  to 
rail  at,  like  those  squatters  who've  merely  squeezed 

44 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  45 

out  what  they  could  and  have  gone  on,  like  those  land- 
miners  who  take  all  they  can  get  and  stand  ready  to 
put  nothing  back.  Why,  if  we  were  all  like  that, 
we'd  have  no  country  here.  We'd  be  a  wilderness,  a 
Barren  Grounds  that  went  from  the  Border  up  to  the 
Circle.  But  there's  something  bigger  than  that  about 
it  all.  I  love  the  prairie.  Just  why  it  is,  I  don't 
know.  It's  too  fundamental  to  be  fashioned  into 
words,  and  I  never  realized  how  deep  it  was  until  I 
went  back  to  the  city  that  time.  One  can  just  say 
it,  and  let  it  go  at  that :  I  love  the  prairie.  It  isn't 
merely  its  bigness,  just  as  it  isn't  altogether  its  free 
dom  and  its  openness.  Perhaps  it's  because  it  keeps 
its  spirit  of  the  adventurous.  I  love  it  the  same  as  my 
children  love  The  Arabian  Nights  and  The  Swiss 
Family  Robinson.  I  thought  it  was  mostly  cant, 
once,  that  cry  about  tbeing  next  to  nature,  but  the 
more  I  know  about  nature  the  more  I  feel  with  Pope 
that  naught  but  man  is  vile,  to  speak  as  impersonally, 
my  dear  Diddums,  as  the  occasion  will  permit.  I'm 
afraid  I'm  like  that  chickadee  that  flew  into  the  bunk- 
house  and  Whinnie  caught  and  put  in  a  box-cage 
for  Dinkie.  I  nearly  die  at  the  thought  of  being 
cooped  up.  I  want  clean  air  and  open  space  about 
me." 


46  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"I  never  dreamed  you'd  been  Indianized  to  that 
extent,"  murmured  my  husband. 

"Being  Indianized,"  I  proceeded,  "seems  to  carry 
the  inference  of  also  being  barbarized.  But  it  isn't 
quite  that,  Dinky-Dunk,  for  there's  something  almost 
spiritually  satisfying  about  this  prairie  life  if  you've 
only  got  the  eyes  to  see  it.  I  think  that's  because  the 
prairie  always  seems  so  majestically  beautiful  to  me. 
I  can  see  your  lip  curl  again,  but  I  know  I'm  right. 
When  I  throw  open  my  windows  of  a  morning  and 
see  that  placid  old  never-ending  plain  under  its  great 
wash  of  light  something  lifts  up  in  my  breast,  like  a 
bird,  and  no  matter  how  a  mere  man  has  been  doing 
his  best  to  make  me  miserable  that  something  stands 
up  on  the  tip  of  my  heart  and  does  its  darnedest  to 
sing.  It  impresses  me  as  life  on  such  a  sane  and 
gigantic  scale  that  I  want  to  be  an  actual  part  of  it, 
that  I  positively  ache  to  have  a  share  in  its  immensi 
ties.  It  seems  so  fruitful  and  prodigal  and  generous 
and  patient.  It's  so  open-handed  in  the  way  it  pro 
duces  and  gives  and  returns  our  love.  And  there's  a 
completeness  about  it  that  makes  me  feel  it  can't 
possibly  be  wrong." 

"The  Eskimo,  I  suppose,  feels  very  much  the  same 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  47 

in  his  little  igloo  of  ice  with  a  pot  of  whale-blubber 
at  his  elbow,"  observed  my  husband. 

"You're  a  brute,  my  dear  Diddums,  and  more 
casually  cruel  than  a  Baffin-land  cannibal,"  I  re 
torted.  "But  we'll  let  it  pass.  For  I'm  talking  about 
something  that's  too  fundamental  to  be  upset  by  a 
bitter  tongue.  There  was  a  time,  I  know,  when  I  used 
to  fret  about  the  finer  things  I  thought  I  was  losing 
out  of  life,  about  the  little  hand-made  fripperies 
people  have  been  forced  to  conjure  up  and  carpenter 
together  to  console  them  for  having  to  live  in  human 
beehives  made  of  steel  and  concrete.  But  I'm  begin 
ning  to  find  out  that  joy  isn't  a  matter  of  geography 
and  companionship  isn't  a  matter  of  over-crowded 
subways.  And  the  strap-hangers  and  the  train- 
catchers  and  the  first-nighters  can  have  what  they've 
got.  I  don't  seem  to  envy  them  the  way  I  used  to.  I 
don't  need  a  Louvre  when  I've  got  the  Northern 
Lights  to  look  at.  And  I  can  get  along  without  an 
^Eolian  Hall  when  I've  got  a  little  music  in  my  own 
heart — for  it's  only  what  you've  got  there,  after  all, 
that  really  counts  in  this  world !" 

"All  of  which  means,"  concluded  my  husband,  "that 
you  are  most  unmistakably  growing  old !" 


48  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"You  have  already,"  I  retorted,  "referred  to  me 
as  a  withered  beauty." 

Dinky-Dunk  studied  me  long  and  intently.  I  even 
felt  myself  turning  pink  under  that  prolonged  stare 
of  appraisal. 

"You  are  still  easy  to  look  at,"  he  over-slangily 
and  over-generously  admitted.  "But  I  do  regret  that 
you  aren't  a  little  easier  to  live  with!" 

I  could  force  a  little  laugh,  at  that,  but  I  couldn't 
quite  keep  a  tremor  out  of  my  voice  when  I  spoke 
again. 

"I'm  sorry  you  see  only  my  bad  side,  Dinky-Dunk. 
But  it's  kindness  that  seems  to  bring  everything  that 
is  best  out  of  us  women.  We're  terribly  like  sliced 
pineapple  in  that  respect:  give  us  just  a  sprinkling 
of  sugar,  and  out  come  all  the  juices !" 

It  was  Dinky-Dunk's  color  that  deepened  a  little 
as  he  turned  and  knocked  out  his  pipe. 

"That's  a  Chaddie  McKail  argument,"  he  merely 
observed  as  he  stood  up.  "And  a  Chaddie  McKail 
argument  impresses  me  as  suspiciously  like  Swiss 
cheese:  it  doesn't  seem  to  be  genuine  unless  you  can 
find  plenty  of  holes  in  it." 

I  did  rnv  best  fo  smile  at  his  humor. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  49 

"But  this  isn't  an  argument,"  I  quietly  corrected. 
"I'd  look  at  it  more  in  the  nature  of  an  ultimatum." 

That  brought  him  up  short,  as  I  had  intended  it 
to  do.  He  stood  worrying  over  it  as  Bobs  and 
Scotty  worry  over  a  bone. 

"I'm  afraid,"  he  finally  intoned,  "I've  been  re 
peatedly  doing  you  the  great  injustice  of  under 
estimating  your  intelligence !" 

"That,"  I  told  him,  "is  a  point  where  I  find  silence 
imposed  upon  me." 

He  didn't  speak  until  he  got  to  the  door. 

"Well,  I'm  glad  we've  cleared  the  air  a  bit  anyway," 
he  said  with  a  grim  look  about  his  Holbein  Astron 
omer  old  mouth  as  he  went  out. 

But  we  haven't  cleared  the  air.  And  it  disturbs  me 
more  than  I  can  say  to  find  that  I  have  reservations 
from  my  husband.  It  bewilders  me  to  see  that  I  can't 
be  perfectly  candid  with  him.  But  there  are  certain 
deeper  feelings  that  I  can  no  longer  uncover  in  his 
presence.  Something  holds  me  back  from  explaining 
to  him  that  this  fixed  dread  of  mine  for  all  cities  is 
largely  based  on  my  loss  of  little  Pee-Wee.  For  if 
I  hadn't  gone  to  New  York  that  time,  to  Josie  Lang- 
don's  wedding,  I  might  never  have  lost  my  boy.  They 


50  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

did  the  best  they  could,  I  suppose,  before  their  tele 
grams  brought  me  back,  but  they  didn't  seem  to 
understand  the  danger.  And  little  did  I  dream, 
before  the  Donnelly  butler  handed  me  that  first 
startling  message  just  as  we  were  climbing  into  the 
motor  to  go  down  to  the  Rochambeau  to  meet  Chinkie 
and  Tavvy,  that  within  a  week  I  was  to  sit  and  watch 
the  crudest  thing  that  can  happen  in  this  world.  I 
was  to  see  a  small  child  die.  I  was  to  watch  my  own 
Pee-Wee  pass  quietly  away. 

I  have  often  wondered,  since,  why  I  never  shed  a 
tear  during  all  those  terrible  three  days.  I  couldn't, 
in  some  way,  though  the  nurse  herself  was  crying,  and 
poor  old  Whinnie  and  Struthers  were  sobbing  to 
gether  next  to  the  window,  and  dour  old  Dinky -Dunk, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  bed,  was  racking  his  shoulders 
with  smothered  sobs  as  he  held  the  little  white  hand 
in  his  and  the  warmth  went  forever  out  of  the  little 
fingers  where  his  foolish  big  hand  was  trying  to  hold 
back  the  life  that  couldn't  be  kept  there.  The  old 
are  ready  to  die,  or  can  make  themselves  ready.  They 
have  run  their  race  and  had  their  turn  at  living.  But 
it  seems  cruel  hard  to  see  a  little  tot,  with  eagerness 
still  in  his  heart,  taken  away,  taken  away  with  the 
wonder  of  things  still  in  his  eyes.  It  stuns  you.  It 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  51 

makes  you  rebel.  It  leaves  a  scar  that  Time  itself 
can  never  completely  heal. 

Yet  through  it  all  I  can  still  hear  the  voice  of 
valorous  old  Whinnie  as  he  patted  my  shoulder  and 
smiled  with  the  brine  still  in  the  seams  of  his  furrowed 
old  face.  "We'll  thole  through,  lassie;  we'll  thole 
through!"  he  said  over  and  over  again.  Yes;  we'll 
thole  through.  And  this  is  only  the  uncovering  of 
old  wounds.  And  one  must  keep  one's  heart  and  one's 
house  in  order,  for  with  us  we  still  have  the  living. 

But  Dinky-Dunk  can't  completely  understand, 
I'm  afraid,  this  morbid  hankering  of  mine  to  keep 
my  family  about  me,  to  have  the  two  chicks  that  are 
left  to  me  close  under  my  wing.  And  never  once,  since 
Pee-Wee  went,  have  I  actually  punished  either  of  my 
children.  It  may  be  wrong,  but  I  can't  help  it.  I 
don't  want  memories  of  violence  to  be  left  corroding 
and  rankling  in  my  mind.  And  I'd  hate  to  see  any 
child  of  mine  cringe,  like  an  ill-treated  dog,  at  every 
lift  of  the  hand.  There  are  better  ways  of  controlling 
them,  I  begin  to  feel,  than  through  fear.  Their 
father,  I  know,  will  never  agree  with  me  on  this  mat 
ter.  He  will  always  insist  on  mastery,  open  and 
undisputed  mastery,  in  his  own  house.  He  is  the 
head  of  this  Clan  McKail,  the  sovereign  of  this  little 


52  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

circle.  For  we  can  say  what  we  will  about  democracy, 
but  when  a  child  is  born  unto  a  man  that  man  uncon 
sciously  puts  on  the  purple.  He  becomes  the  ruler 
and  sits  on  the  throne  of  authority.  He  even  seeks 
to  cloak  his  weaknesses  and  his  mistakes  in  that 
threadbare  old  fabrication  about  the  divine  right  of 
kings.  But  I  can  see  that  he  is  often  wrong,  and 
even  my  Dinkie  can  see  that  he  is  not  always  right  in 
his  decrees.  More  and  more  often,  of  late,  I've  ob 
served  the  boy  studying  his  father,  studying  him  with 
an  impersonal  and  critical  eye.  And  this  habit  of 
silent  appraisal  is  plainly  something  which  Duncan 
resents,  and  resents  keenly.  He's  beginning  to  have  a 
feeling,  I'm  afraid,  that  he  can't  quite  get  at  the  boy. 
And  there's  a  youthful  shyness  growing  up  in  Dinkie 
which  seems  to  leave  him  ashamed  of  any  display  of 
emotion  before  his  father.  I  can  see  that  it  even 
begins  to  exasperate  Duncan  a  little,  to  be  shut  out 
behind  those  incontestable  walls  of  reserve.  It's 
merely,  I'm  sure,  that  the  child  is  so  terribly  afraid 
of  ridicule.  He  already  nurses  a  hankering  to  be 
regarded  as  one  of  the  grown-ups  and  imagines 
there's  something  rather  babyish  in  any  undue  show 
of  feeling.  Yet  he  is  hungry  for  affection.  And  he 
aches,  I  know,  for  the  approbation  of  his  male  parent, 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  53 

for  the  approval  of  a  full-grown  man  whom  he  can 
regard  as  one  of  his  own  kind.  He  even  imitates  his 
father  in  the  way  in  which  he  stands  in  front  of  the 
fire,  with  his  heels  well  apart.  And  he  gives  me  chills 
up  the  spine  by  pulling  short  on  one  bridle-rein  and 
making  Buntie,  his  mustang-pony,  pirouette  just  as 
the  wicked- tempered  Briquette  sometimes  pirouettes 
when  his  father  is  in  the  saddle.  Yet  Dinky-Dunk's 
nerves  are  a  bit  ragged  and  there  are  times  when  he's 
not  always  just  with  the  boy,  though  it's  not  for  me 
to  confute  what  the  instinctive  genius  of  childhood 
has  already  made  reasonably  clear  to  Dinkie's  dis 
cerning  young  eye.  But  I  can  not,  of  course,  encour 
age  insubordination.  All  I  can  do  is  to  ignore  the 
unwelcome  and  try  to  crowd  it  aside  with  happier 
things.  I  want  my  boy  to  love  me,  as  I  love  him. 
And  I  think  he  does.  I  know  he  does.  That  knowl 
edge  is  an  azure  and  bottomless  lake  into  which  I 
can  toss  my  blackest  pebbles  of  fear,  my  flintiest 
doubts  of  the  future. 


Sunday  the  Fourth 

I  WISH  I  could  get  by  the  scruff  of  the  neck  that 
sophomoric  old  philosopher  who  once  said  nothing 
survives  being  thought  of.  For  I've  been  learning, 
this  last  two  or  three  days,  just  how  wide  of  the 
mark  he  shot.  And  it's  all  arisen  out  of  Dinky- 
Dunk's  bland  intimation  that  I  am  "a  withered 
beauty."  Those  words  have  held  like  a  fish-hook  in 
the  gills  of  my  memory.  If  they'd  come  from  some 
body  else  they  mightn't  have  meant  so  much.  But 
from  one's  own  husband — Wow! — they  go  in  like  a 
harpoon.  And  they  have  given  me  a  great  deal  to 
think  about.  There  are  times,  I  find,  when  I  can 
accept  that  intimation  of  slipping  into  the  sere  and 
yellow  leaf  without  revolt.  Then  the  next  moment  it 
fills  me  with  a  sort  of  desperation.  I  refuse  to  go  up 
on  the  shelf.  I  see  red  and  storm  against  age.  I 
refuse  to  bow  to  the  inevitable.  My  spirit  recoils 
at  the  thought  of  decay.  For  when  you're  fading 
you're  surely  decaying,  and  when  you're  decaying 

54 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  55 

you're  approaching  the  end.  So  stop,  Father  Time, 
stop,  or  I'll  get  out  of  the  car ! 

But  we  can't  get  out  of  the  car.  That's  the  tragic 
part  of  it.  We  have  to  go  on,  whether  we  like  it  or 
not.  We  have  to  buck  up,  and  grin  and  bear  it,  and 
make  the  best  of  a  bad  bargain.  And  Heaven  knows 
I've  never  wanted  to  be  one  of  the  Glooms !  I've  no 
hankering  to  sit  with  the  Sob  Sisters  and  pump 
brine  over  the  past.  I'm  light-hearted  enough  if 
they'll  only  give  me  a  chance.  I've  always  believed  in 
getting  what  we  could  out  of  life  and  looking  on  the 
sunny  side  of  things.  And  the  disturbing  part  of  it 
is,  I  don't  feel  withered — not  by  a  jugful!  There 
are  mornings  when  I  can  go  about  my  homely  old 
duties  singing  like  a  prairie  Tetrazzini.  There  are 
days  when  I  could  do  a  hand-spring,  if  for  nothing 
more  than  to  shock  my  solemn  old  Dinky-Dunk  out 
of  his  dourness.  There  are  times  when  we  go  skim 
ming  along  the  trail  with  the  crystal-cool  evening 
air  in  our  faces  and  the  sun  dipping  down  toward  the 
rim  of  the  world  when  I  want  to  thank  Somebody  I 
can't  see  for  Something-or-other  I  can't  define.  Dum 
vivimus  vivamus. 

But  it  seems  hard  to  realize  that  I'm  a  sedate  and 
elderly  lady  already  on  the  shady  side  of  thirty.  A 


56  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

woman  over  thirty  years  old — and  I  can  remember 
the  days  of  my  intolerant  youth  when  I  regarded  the 
woman  of  thirty  as  an  antiquated  creature  who  should 
be  piously  preparing  herself  for  the  next  world.  And 
it  doesn't  take  thirty  long  to  slip  into  forty.  And 
then  forty  merges  into  fifty — and  there  you  are,  a 
nice  old  lady  with  nervous  indigestion  and  knitting- 
needles  and  a  tendency  to  breathe  audibly  after 
ascending  the  front-stairs.  No  wonder,  last  night,  it 
drove  me  to  taking  a  volume  of  George  Moore  down 
from  the  shelf  and  reading  his  chapter  on  "The 
Woman  of  Thirty."  But  I  found  small  consolation 
in  that  over-uxorious  essay,  feeling  as  I  did  that  J 
knew  life  quite  as  well  as  any  amorous  studio-rat 
who  ever  made  copy  out  of  his  mottled  past.  So  I 
was  driven,  in  the  end,  to  studying  myself  long  and 
intently  in  the  broken-hinged  mirrors  of  my  dressing- 
table.  And  I  didn't  find  much  there  to  fortify  my 
quailing  spirit.  I  was  getting  on  a  bit.  I  was  curling 
up  a  little  around  the  edges.  There  was  no  denying 
that  fact.  For  I  could  see  a  little  fan-light  of  lines 
at  the  outer  corner  of  each  eye.  And  down  what 
Dinky-Dunk  once  called  the  honeyed  corners  of  my 
mouth  went  another  pair  of  lines  which  clearly  came 
from  too  much  laughing.  But  most  unmistakably  of 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  57 

all  there  was  a  line  coming  under  my  chin,  a  small  but 
telltale  line,  announcing  the  fact  that  I  wasn't  losing 
any  in  weight,  and  standing,  I  suppose,  one  of  the 
foot-hills  which  precede  the  Rocky-Mountain  dewlaps 
of  old  age.  It  wouldn't  be  long,  I  could  see,  before 
I'd  have  to  start  watching  my  diet,  and  looking  for 
a  white  hair  or  two,  and  probably  give  up  horseback 
riding.  And  then  settle  down  into  an  ingle-nook  old 
dowager  with  a  hassock  under  my  feet  and  a  creak  in 
my  knees  and  a  fixed  conviction  that  young  folks 
never  acted  up  in  my  youth  as  they  act  up  nowadays. 

I  tried  to  laugh  it  away,  but  my  heart  went  down 
like  a  dredge-dipper.  Whereupon  I  set  my  jaw, 
which  didn't  make  me  look  any  younger.  But  I  didn't 
much  care,  for  the  mirror  had  already  done  its  worst. 

"Not  muchee !"  I  said  as  I  sat  there  making  faces 
at  myself.  "You're  still  one  of  the  living.  The 
bloom  may  be  off  in  a  place  or  two,  but  you're  sound 
to  the  core,  and  serviceable  for  many  a  year.  So 
sursum  cor  da!  'Rung  ho!  Hira  Singh!'  as  Chinkie 
taught  us  to  shout  in  the  old  polo  days.  And  that 
means,  Go  in  and  win,  Chaddie  McKail,  and  die  with 
your  boots  on  if  you  have  to." 

I  was  still  intent  on  that  study  of  my  robust- 
looking  but  slightly  weather-beaten  map  when  Dinky- 


58  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Dunk  walked  in  and  caught  me  in  the  middle  of  my 
Narcissus  act. 

"  'All  is  vanity  saith  the  Preacher,'  "  he  began. 
But  he  stopped  short  when  I  swung  about  at  him. 
For  I  hadn't,  after  all,  been  able  to  carpenter  to 
gether  even  a  whale-boat  of  consolation  out  of  my 
wrecked  schooner  of  hope. 

"Oh,  Kakaibod,"  I  wailed,  "I'm  a  pie-faced  old  has- 
been,  and  nobody  will  ever  love  me  again !" 

He  only  laughed,  on  his  way  out,  and  announced 
that  I  seemed  to  be  getting  my  share  of  loving,  as 
things  went.  But  he  didn't  take  back  what  he  said 
about  me  being  withered.  And  the  first  thing  I  shall 
do  to-morrow,  when  Gershom  comes  down  to  break 
fast,  will  be  to  ask  him  how  old  Cleopatra  was  when 
she  brought  Antony  to  his  knees  and  how  antiquated 
Ninon  D'Enclos  was  when  she  lost  her  power  over 
that  semi-civilized  creature  known  as  Man.  Gershom 
will  know,  for  Gershom  knows  everything. 


Wednesday  the  Seventh 

GERSHOM  has  been  studying  some  of  my  carbon- 
prints.  He  can't  for  the  life  of  him  understand  why 
I  consider  Dewing's  Old-fashioned  Gown  so  beautiful, 
or  why  I  should  love  Childe  Hassam's  Church  at  Old 
Lyme  or  see  anything  remarkable  about  Metcalf's 
May  Night.  But  I  cherish  them  as  one  cherishes 
photographs  of  lost  friends. 

A  couple  of  the  Horatio  Walker's,  he  acknowl 
edged,  seemed  to  mean  something  to  him.  But  Ger- 
shom's  still  in  the  era  when  he  demands  a  story  in 
the  picture  and  could  approach  Monet  and  Degas 
only  by  way  of  Meissonier  and  Bouguereau.  And  a 
print,  after  all,  is  only  a  print.  He's  slightly  ashamed 
to  admire  beauty  as  mere  beauty,  contending  that  at 
the  core  of  all  such  things  there  should  be  a  moral. 
So  we  pow-wowed  for  an  hour  and  more  over  the 
threadbare  old  theme  and  the  most  I  could  get  out 
of  Gershom  was  that  the  lady  in  The  Old-fashioned 
Gown  reminded  him  of  me,  only  I  was  more  vital. 
But  all  that  talk  about  landscape  and  composition 

59 


60  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

and  line  and  tone  made  me  momentarily  homesick  for  a 
glimpse  of  Old  Lyme  again,  before  I  go  to  my  reward. 
But  the  mood  didn't  last.  And  I  no  longer  regret 
what's  lost.  I  don't  know  what  mysterious  Divide 
it  is  I  have  crossed  over,  but  it  seems  to  be  peace  I 
want  now  instead  of  experience.  I'm  no  longer  en 
vious  of  the  East  and  all  it  holds.  I'm  no  longer 
fretting  for  wider  circles  of  life.  The  lights  may  be 
shining  bright  on  many  a  board-walk,  at  this  moment, 
but  it  means  little  to  this  ranch-lady.  What  I  want 
now  is  a  better  working-plan  for  that  which  has 
already  been  placed  before  me.  Often  and  often,  in 
the  old  days,  when  I  realized  how  far  away  from  the 
world  this  lonely  little  island  of  Casa  Grande  and  its 
inhabitants  stood,  I  used  to  nurse  a  ghostly  envy  for 
the  busier  tideways  of  life  from  which  we  were  ban 
ished.  I  used  to  feel  that  grandeur  was  in  some  way 
escaping  me.  I  could  picture  what  was  taking  place 
in  some  of  those  golden-gray  old  cities  I  had  known: 
The  Gardens  of  the  Luxembourg  when  the  horse- 
chestnuts  were  coming  out  in  bloom,  and  the  Chateau 
de  Madrid  in  the  Bois  at  the  luncheon  hour,  or  the 
Pre  Catalan  on  a  Sunday  with  heavenly  sole  in  lemon 
and  melted  butter  and  a  still  more  heavenly  waltz  as 
you  sat  eating  fraises  des  bois  smothered  in  thick 


61 

creme  cTIsigny.  Or  the  Piazzi  di  Spagna  on  Easter 
Sunday  with  the  murmur  of  Rome  in  your  ears  and 
the  cars  and  carriages  flashing  through  the  green- 
gold  shadows  of  the  Pincio.  Or  Hyde  Park  in  May, 
with  the  sun  sifting  through  the  brave  old  trees  and 
flashing  on  the  helmets  of  the  Life  Guards  as  the  King 
goes  by  in  a  scarlet  uniform  with  the  blue  Order  of 
the  Garter  on  his  breast,  or  Park  Lane  on  a  glorious 
light-and-shadow  afternoon  in  June  and  a  dip  into 
£he  familiar  old  Americanized  clangor  at  the  Cecil; 
or  Chinkie's  place  in  Devonshire  about  a  month 
earlier,  sitting  out  on  the  terrace  wrapped  in 
steamer-rugs  and  waiting  for  the  moon  to  come  up 
and  the  first  nightingale  to  sing.  Of  Fifth  Avenue 
shining  almost  bone-white  in  the  clear  December  sun 
light  and  the  salted  nuts  and  orange-blossom  cock 
tails  at  Sherry's,  or  the  Plaza  tea-room  at  about 
five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  with  the  smell  of  Turkish 
tobacco  and  golden  pekoe  and  hot-house  violets  and 
Houbigant's  Quelque-fleurs  all  tangled  up  together. 
Or  the  City  of  Wild  Parsley  in  March  with  a  wave 
of  wild  flowers  breaking  over  the  ruins  of  Selinunte 
and  the  tumbling  pillars  of  the  Temple  of  Olympian 
Zeus  lying  time-mellowed  in  the  clear  Sicilian  sun 
light  ! 


62  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

They  were  all  lovely  enough,  and  still  are,  I  sup 
pose,  but  it's  a  loveliness  in  some  way  involved  with 
youth.  So  the  memory  of  those  far-off  gaieties, 
which,  after  all,  were  so  largely  physical,  no  longer 
touch  me  with  unrest.  They're  wine  that's  drunk  and 
water  that's  run  under  the  bridge.  Younger  lips  can 
drink  of  that  cup,  which  was  sweet  enough  in  its  time. 
Let  the  newer  girls  dance  their  legs  off  under  the 
French  crystals  of  the  Ritz,  and  powder  their  noses 
over  the  Fountain  of  the  Sunken  Boat,  and  eat  the 
numbered  duck  so  reverentially  doled  out  at  La  Tour 
d'Argent  and  puff  their  cigarettes  behind  the  beds  of 
begonias  and  marguerites  at  the  Chateau  Madrid. 
They  too  will  get  tired  of  it,  and  step  aside  for  others. 
For  the  petal  falls  from  the  blossom  and  the  blossom 
plumps  out  into  fruit.  And  all  those  golden  girls, 
when  their  day  is  over,  must  slip  away  from  those 
gardens  of  laughter.  When  they  don't,  they  only 
make  themselves  ridiculous.  For  there's  nothing 
sadder  than  an  antique  lady  of  other  days  decking 
herself  out  in  the  furbelows  of  a  lost  youth.  And  I've 
got  Dinky-Dunk's  overalls  to  patch  and  my  bread  to 
set,  so  I  can't  think  much  more  about  it  to-night. 
But  after  I've  done  my  chores,  and  before  I  go  up  to 
bed,  I'm  going  to  read  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  right  through 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  63 

to  the  end.  I'll  do  it  in  front  of  the  fire,  with  my 
feet  up  and  with  three  Ontario  Northern  Spy  apples 
on  a  plate  beside  me,  to  be  munched  as  Audrey  her 
self  might  have  munched  them,  oblivious  of  any 
Touchstone  and  his  reproving  eyes. 

I  have  stopped  to  ponder,  however,  how  much  of 
this  morbid  dread  of  mine  for  big  cities  is  due  to 
that  short  and  altogether  unsatisfactory  visit  to  New 
York,  to  that  sense  of  coming  back  a  stranger  and 
finding  old  friends  gone  and  those  who  were  left  with 
such  entirely  new  interests. 

I  was  out  of  it,  completely  and  dishearteningly  out 
of  it.  And  my  clothes  were  all  wrong.  My  hats 
were  wrong;  my  shoes  were  wrong;  and  every  rag  I 
had  on  me  was  in  some  way  wrong.  I  was  a  tourist 
from  the  provinces.  And  I  wasn't  up-to-date  with 
either  what  was  on  me  or  was  in  me.  I  didn't  even 
know  the  new  subway  routes  or  the  telephone  rules  or 
the  proper  places  to  go  for  tea.  The  Metropolitan 
looked  cramped  and  shoddy  and  Tristcm  seemed  shod- 
dily  sung  to  me.  There  was  no  thrill  to  it.  And 
even  The  Jewels  of  the  Madonna  impressed  me  as  a 
bit  garish  and  off  color,  with  the  Apache  Dance  of 
the  last  act  almost  an  affront  to  God  and  man.  I 
even  asked  myself,  when  I  found  that  I  had  lost  the 


64  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

trick  of  laughing  at  bridal-suite  farces,  if  it  was  the 
possession  of  children  that  had  changed  me.  For 
when  you're  with  children  you  must  in  some  way 
match  their  snowy  innocence  with  a  kindred  coloring 
of  innocence,  very  much  as  the  hare  and  the  weasel 
and  the  ptarmigan  turn  white  to  match  the  whiteness 
of  our  northern  winter.  Yet  I  was  able  to  wring  pure 
joy  out  of  Rachmaninoff's  playing  at  Carnegie  Hall, 
with  a  great  man  making  music  for  music's  sake.  I 
loved  the  beauty  and  balance  and  splendid  sanity  of 
that  playing,  without  keyboard  fire-works  and  dazzle 
and  glare.  But  Rachmaninoff  was  the  exception. 
Even  Central  Park  seemed  smaller  than  of  old,  and  I 
couldn't  remember  which  drives  Dinky-Dunk  and  I 
had  taken  in  the  historic  old  hansom-cab  after  our 
equally  historic  marriage  by  ricochet.  Fifth  Avenue 
itself  was  different,  the  caterpillar  of  trade  having 
crawled  a  little  farther  up  the  stalk  of  fashion,  for 
the  shops,  I  found,  went  right  up  to  the  Park,  and 
the  old  W.  K.  house  where  we  once  danced  our  long- 
forgotten  Dresden  China  Quadrille,  in  imitation  of 
the  equally  forgotten  Eighty-Three  event,  confronted 
me  as  a  beehive  of  business  offices.  I  couldn't  quite 
get  used  to  the  new  names  and  the  new  faces  and  the 
new  shops  and  the  side-street  theaters  and  the 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  65 

thought  of  really  nice  girls  going  to  a  prize-fight  in 
Madison  Square  Garden,  and  the  eternal  and  never- 
ending  talk  about  drinks,  about  where  and  how  to 
get  them,  and  how  to  mix  them,  and  how  much 
Angostura  to  put  into  'em,  and  the  musty  ale  that 
used  to  be  had  at  Losekam's  in  Washington,  and  the 
Beaux  Arts  cocktails  that  used  to  come  with  a  dash 
of  absinthe,  and  the  shipment  of  pinch-neck  Scotch 
which  somebody  smuggled  in  on  his  cruiser-yacht 
from  the  east  end  of  Cuba,  and  so-forth  and  so-forth 
until  I  began  to  feel  that  the  only  important  thing  in 
the  world  was  the  possession  and  dispensation  of 
alcohol.  And  out  of  it  I  got  the  headache  without 
getting  the  fun.  I  had  the  same  dull  sense  of  being 
cheated  which  came  to  me  in  my  flapper  days  when 
I  fell  asleep  with  a  mouthful  of  contraband  gum  and 
woke  up  in  the  morning  with  my  jaw-muscles  tired — • 
I'd  been  facing  all  the  exertion  without  getting  any  ( 
of  the  satisfaction. 

The  one  bright  spot  to  me,  in  that  lost  city  of  my 
childhood,  was  the  part  of  Madison  Avenue  which 
used  to  be  known  as  Murray  Hill,  the  right-of-way 
along  the  west  sidewalk  of  which  I  once  commandeered 
for  an  afternoon's  coasting.  I  could  see  again,  as  I 
glanced  down  the  familiar  slope,  the  puffy  figure  of 


66  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

old  Major  Elmes,  who  in  those  days  was  always  paw 
ing  somebody,  since  he  seemed  to  believe  with  Novalis 
that  he  touched  heaven  when  he  placed  his  hand  on  a 
human  body.  I  could  see  myself  sky-hooting  down 
that  icy  slope  on  my  coaster,  approaching  the  old 
Major  from  the  rear  and  peremptorily  piping  out: 
"One  side,  please!"  For  I  was  young  then,  and  I 
expected  all  life  to  make  way  for  me.  But  the  old 
Major  betrayed  no  intention  of  altering  his  solemnly 
determined  course  at  any  such  juvenile  suggestion, 
with  the  result  that  he  sat  down  on  me  bodily,  and 
for  the  next  two  blocks  approached  his  club  in  Mad 
ison  Square  in  a  manner  and  at  a  speed  which  he  had 
in  no  wise  anticipated.  But,  Eheu,  how  long  ago  it 
all  seemed! 


Saturday  the  Tenth 

PETER  has  written  back  in  answer  to  my  question 
as  to  the  expediency  of  sending  my  boy  off  to  a 
boarding-school.  He  put  all  he  had  to  say  in  two 
lines.  They  were: 

"//  /  had  a  mother  like  Dinkie's,  I'd  stick  to  her 
until  the  stars  were  dust." 

That  was  very  nice  of  Peter,  of  course,  but  I  don't 
imagine  he  had  any  idea  of  the  peck  of  trouble  he 
was  going  to  stir  up  at  Casa  Grande.  For  Dinky- 
Dunk  picked  up  the  sheet  of  paper  on  which  that 
light-hearted  message  had  been  written  and  perused 
the  two  lines,  perused  them  with  a  savagery  which 
rather  disturbed  me.  He  read  them  for  the  second 
time,  and  then  he  put  them  down.  His  eye,  as  he 
confronted  me,  was  a  glacial  one. 

"It's  too  bad  we  can't  run  this  show  without  the 
interference  of  outsiders,"  he  announced  as  he  stalked 
out  of  the  room. 

I've  been  thinking  the  thing  over,  and  trying  to 
67 


68  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

get  my  husband's  view-point.  But  I  can't  quite  suc 
ceed.  There  has  always  been  a  touch  of  the  satyric 
in  Dinky-Dunk's  attitude  toward  Peter's  weekly 
letter  to  my  boy.  He  has  even  intimated  that  they 
were  written  in  a  new  kind  of  Morse,  the  inference 
being  that  they  were  intended  to  carry  messages  in 
cipher  to  eyes  other  than  Dinkie's.  But  Peter  is 
much  too  honest  a  man  for  any  such  resort  to  sub 
terfuge.  And  Dinky-Dunk  has  always  viewed  with 
a  hostile  eye  the  magazines  and  books  and  toys  \vhich 
big-hearted  Peter  has  showered  out  on  us.  Peter 
always  was  ridiculously  open-handed.  And  he  always 
loved  my  Dinkie.  And  it's  only  natural  that  our 
thoughts  should  turn  back  to  where  our  love  has 
been  left.  Peter,  I  know,  gets  quite  as  much  fun  out 
of  those  elaborately  playful  letters  to  Dinkie  as 
Dinkie  does  himself.  And  it's  left  the  boy  more 
anxious  to  learn,  to  the  end  that  he  may  pen  a  more 
respectable  reply  to  them. 

Some  of  Peter's  gifts,  it  is  true,  have  been  embar 
rassingly  ornate,  but  Peter,  who  has  been  given  so 
much,  must  have  remembered  how  little  has  come  to 
my  kiddies.  It  was  my  intention,  for  a  while,  to  talk 
this  over  with  Dinky-Dunk,  to  try  to  make  him  see 
it  in  a  more  reasonable  light.  But  I  have  now  given 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  69 

up  that  intention.  There's  a  phantasmal  something 
that  holds  me  back.  .  .  . 

I  dreamt  last  night  that  my  little  Dinkie  was  a 
grown  youth  in  a  Greek  academy,  wearing  a  toga 
and  sitting  on  a  marble  bench  overlooking  a  sea  of 
lovely  sapphire.  There  both  Peter  and  Percy,  also 
arrayed  in  togas,  held  solemn  discourse  with  my  off 
spring  and  finally  agreed  that  once  they  were  through 
with  him  he  would  be  the  Wonder  of  the  Age.  .  .  . 

Dinky-Dunk  asked  me  point-blank  to-day  if  I'd 
consider  the  sale  of  Casa  Grande,  provided  he  got 
the  right  price  for  the  ranch.  I  felt,  for  a  moment, 
as  though  the  bottom  had  been  knocked  out  of  my 
world.  But  it  showed  me  the  direction  in  which  my 
husband's  thoughts  have  been  running  of  late.  And 
I  just  as  pointedly  retorted  that  I'd  never  consent 
to  the  sale  of  Casa  Grande.  It's  not  merely  because 
it's  our  one  and  only  home.  It's  more  because  of  the 
little  knoll  where  the  four  Manitoba  maples  have 
been  set  and  the  row  of  prairie-roses  have  been 
planted  along  the  little  iron  fence,  the  little  iron 
fence  which  twice  a  year  I  paint  a  virginal  white, 
with  my  own  hands.  For  that's  where  my  Pee-Wee 
sleeps,  and  that  lonely  little  grave  must  never  pass 
out  of  my  care,  to  be  forgotten  and  neglected  and 


70  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

tarnished  with  time.  It's  not  a  place  of  sorrow  now, 
but  more  an  altar,  duly  tended,  the  flower-covered 
bed  of  my  Pee-Wee,  of  my  poor  little  Pee-Wee  who 
was  so  brimming  with  life  and  love.  He  used  to  make 
me  think  of  a  humming-bird  in  a  garden — and  now 
all  I  have  left  of  him  is  my  small  chest  of  toys  and 
trinkets  and  baby-clothes.  God,  I  know,  will  be 
good  to  that  lonely  little  newcomer  in  His  world  of 
the  statelier  dead,  in  His  gallery  of  whispering 
ghosts.  Oh,  be  good  to  him,  God !  Be  good  to  him, 
or  You  shall  be  no  God  of  mine!  I  can't  think  of 
him  as  dead,  as  going  out  like  a  candle,  as  melting 
into  nothingness  as  the  little  bones  under  their  six 
feet  of  earth  molder  away.  But  my  laddie  is  gone. 
And  I  must  not  be  morbid.  As  Peter  once  said, 
misery  loves  company,  but  the  company  is  apt  to 
seek  more  convivial  quarters.  Yet  something  has 
gone  out  of  my  life,  and  that  something  drives  me 
back  to  my  Dinkie  and  my  Poppsy  with  a  sort  of 
fierceness  in  my  hunger  to  love  them,  to  make  the 
most  of  them. 

Gershom,  who  has  been  giving  Poppsy  a  daily 
lesson  at  home,  has  just  inquired  why  she  shouldn't 
be  sent  to  school  along  with  Dinkie.  And  her  father 
has  agreed.  It  gave  me  the  wretched  feeling,  for  a 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  71 

moment  or  two,  that  they  were  conspiring  to  take 
my  last  baby  away  from  me.  But  I  have  to  bow 
to  the  fact  that  I  no  longer  possess  one,  since  Poppsy 
announced  her  preference,  the  other  day,  for  a  doll 
"with  real  livings  in  it."  She  begins  to  show  as 
fixed  an  aversion  to  baby-talk  as  that  entertained  by 
old  Doctor  Johnson  himself,  and  no  longer  yearns 
to  "do  yidin  on  the  team-tars,"  as  she  used  to  express 
it.  The  word  "birthday"  is  still  "birfday"  with  her, 
and  "water"  is  still  "wagger,"  but  she  now  reli 
giously  eschews  all  such  reiterative  diminutives  as 
"roundy-poundy"  and  "Poppsy-Woppsy"  and 
"beddy-bed."  She  has  even  learned,  after  much 
effort,  to  convert  her  earlier  "keam  of  feet"  into 
the  more  legitimate  and  mature  "cream  of  wheat." 
And  now  that  she  has  a  better  mastery  of  the  sib 
ilants  the  charm  has  rather  gone  out  of  the  claim, 
which  I  so  laboriously  taught  her,  that  "Daddy  is 
all  feet,"  meaning,  of  course,  that  he  was  altogether 
sweet — which  he  gave  small  sign  of  being  when  he 
first  caught  the  point  of  my  patient  schooling.  She 
is  not  so  quick-tongued  as  her  brother  Dinkie,  but 
she  has  a  natural  fastidiousness  which  makes  her 
long  for  alignment  with  the  proprieties.  She  is,  in 
fact,  a  conformist,  a  sedate  and  dignified  little  lady 


72  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

who  will  never  be  greatly  given  to  the  spilling  of 
beans  and  the  upsetting  of  apple-carts.  She  is,  in 
many  ways,  amazingly  like  her  pater.  She  will,  I 
know,  be  a  nice  girl  when  she  grows  up,  without  very 
much  of  that  irresponsibility  which  seems  to  have 
been  the  bugbear  of  her  maternal  parent.  I'm  even 
beginning  to  believe  there's  something  in  the  old  tra 
dition  about  ancestral  traits  so  often  skipping  a 
generation.  At  any  rate,  that  crazy-hearted  old 
Irish  grandmother  of  mine  passed  on  to  me  a  muckle 
o'  her  wildness,  the  mad  County  Clare  girl  who 
swore  at  the  vicar  and  rode  to  hounds  and  could 
take  a  seven-barred  gate  without  turning  a  hair  and 
was  apt  to  be  always  in  love  or  in  debt  or  in  hot 
water.  She  died  too  young  to  be  tamed,  I'm  told,  for 
say  what  you  will,  life  tames  us  all  in  the  end.  Even 
Lady  Hamilton  took  to  wearing  red-flannel  petti 
coats  before  she  died,  and  Buffalo  Bill  faded  down 
into  plain  Mr.  William  Cody,  and  the  abducted  Helen 
of  Troy  gave  many  a  day  up  to  her  needlework,  we 
are  told,  and  doubtlessly  had  trouble  with  both  her 
teeth  and  her  waist  measurement. 

Dinky-Dunk  is  proud  of  his  Poppsy  and  has  an 
nounced  that  it's  about  time  we  tucked  the  "Poppsy" 
away  with  her  baby-clothes  and  resorted  to  the  use 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  73 

of  the  proper  and  official  "Pauline  Augusta."  So 
Pauline  we  shall  try  to  have  it,  after  this.  There  are 
several  things,  I  think,  which  draw  Dinky-Dunk  and 
his  Poppsy — I  mean  his  Pauline — together.  One  is 
her  likeness  to  himself.  Another  is  her  tractability, 
though  I  hate  to  hitch  so  big  a  word  on  to  so  small 
a  lady.  And  still  another  is  the  fact  that  she  is  a 
girl.  There's  a  subliminal  play  of  sex-attraction 
about  it,  I  suppose,  just  as  there  probably  is  be 
tween  Dinkie  and  me.  And  there's  something  very 
admirable  in  Pauline  Augusta's  staid  adoration  of 
her  dad.  She  plays  up  to  him,  I  can  see,  without 
quite  knowing  she's  doing  it.  She's  hungry  for  his 
approval,  and  happiest,  always,  in  his  presence. 
Then,  too,  she  makes  him  forget,  for  the  time  at 
least,  his  disappointment  in  a  soul-mate  who  hasn't 
quite  measured  up  to  expectations !  And  I  devoutly 
thank  the  Master  of  Life  and  Love  that  my  solemn 
old  Dinky-Dunk  can  thus  care  for  his  one  and  only 
daughter.  It  softens  him,  and  keeps  the  sordid 
worries  of  the  moment  from  vitrifying  his  heart.  It 
puts  a  rainbow  in  his  sky  of  every-day  work,  and 
gives  him  something  to  plan  and  plot  and  live  for. 
And  he  needs  it.  We  all  do.  It's  our  human  and 
natural  hunger  for  companionship.  And  as  he  ob- 


74  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

served  not  long  ago,  if  that  hunger  can't  be  satis 
fied  at  home,  we  wander  off  and  snatch  what  we  can 
on  the  wing.  Some  day  when  they're  rich,  I  over 
heard  Dinky-Dunk  announcing  the  other  night, 
Pauline  Augusta  and  her  Dad  are  going  to  make 
the  Grand  Tour  of  Europe.  And  there,  undoubt 
edly,  do  their  best  to  pick  up  a  Prince  of  the  Royal 
Blood  and  have  a  chateau  in  Lombardy  and  a  villa 
on  the  Riviera  and  a  standing  invitation  to  all  the 
Embassy  Balls! 

Well,  not  if  I  know  it.  None  of  that  penny-a- 
liner  moonshine  for  my  daughter.  And  as  she  grows 
older,  I  feel  sure,  I'll  have  more  influence  over  her. 
She'll  begin  to  realize  that  the  battle  of  life  hasn't 
scarred  up  for  nothing  this  wary-eyed  old  mater 
who's  beginning  to  know  a  hawk  from  a  henshaw. 
Pve  learned  a  thing  or  two  in  my  day,  and  one  or 
two  of  them  are  going  to  be  passed  on  to  my  off 
spring. 


Thursday  the  Fifteenth 

STRUTHERS  and  I  have  been  house-cleaning,  for 
this  is  the  middle  of  May,  and  our  reluctant  old 
northern  spring  seems  to  be  here  for  good.  It  has 
been  backward,  this  year,  but  the  last  of  the  mud 
has  gone,  and  I  hope  to  have  my  first  setting  of 
chicks  out  in  a  couple  of  days.  Dinkie  wants  to 
start  riding  Buntie  to  school,  but  his  pater  says 
otherwise.  Gershom  goes  off  every  morning,  with 
Calamity  Kate  hitched  to  the  old  buckboard,  with 
my  two  kiddies  packed  in  next  to  him  and  provender 
enough  for  himself  and  the  kiddies  and  Calamity 
Kate  under  the  seat.  The  house  seems  very  empty 
when  they  are  away.  But  some  time  about  five, 
every  afternoon,  I  see  them  loping  back  along  the 
trail.  Then  comes  the  welcoming  bark  of  old  Bobs, 
and  a  raid  on  the  cooky-jar,  and  traces  of  bread- 
and-jelly  on  two  hungry  little  faces,  and  the  familiar 
old  tumult  about  the  reanimated  rooms  of  Casa 
Grande.  Then  Poppsy — I  beg  her  ladyship's  par 
don,  for  I  mean,  of  course,  Pauline  Augusta — has 

75 


76  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

to  duly  inspect  her  dolls  to  assure  herself  that  they 
are  both  well-behaved  and  spotless  as  to  apparel, 
for  Pauline  Augusta  is  a  stickler  as  to  decorum  and 
cleanliness ;  and  Dinkie  falls  to  working  on  his  air 
ship,  which  he  is  this  time  making  quite  independent 
of  Whinnie,  whose  last  creation  along  that  line  be 
trayed  a  disheartening  disability  for  flight.  But 
even  this  second  effort,  I'm  afraid,  is  doomed  to 
failure,  for  more  than  once  I've  seen  Dinkie  back 
away  and  stand  regarding  his  incompetent  flier  with 
a  look  of  frustration  on  his  face.  He  is  always 
working  over  machinery — for  he  loves  anything  with 
wheels — and  I'm  pretty  well  persuaded  that  the 
twentieth-century  mania  of  us  grown-ups  for  picking 
ourselves  to  pieces  is  nothing  more  than  a  develop 
ment  of  this  childish  hunger  to  get  the  cover  off 
things  and  see  the  works  go  round.  Dinkie  makes 
wagons  and  carts  and  water-wheels,  but  some  com 
mon  fatality  of  incompetence  overtakes  them  all  and 
they  are  cast  aside  for  enterprises  more  novel  and 
more  promising.  He  announces,  now,  that  he  intends 
to  be  an  engineer.  And  that  recalls  the  time  when 
I  was  convinced  in  my  own  soul  that  he  was  destined 
for  a  life  of  art,  since  he  was  forever  asking  me  to 
draw  him  "a  li'l'  man,"  and  later  on  fell  to  drawing 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  77 

them  himself.  He  would  do  his  best  to  inscribe  a 
circle  and  then  emboss  it  with  perfectly  upright  hair, 
as  though  the  person  in  question  had  just  been  pe 
rusing  the  most  stirring  of  penny-dreadfuls.  Then 
he  would  put  in  two  dots  of  eyes,  and  one  abbreviated 
and  vertical  line  for  the  nose,  and  another  elongated 
and  horizontal  line  for  the  mouth,  and  arms  with 
extended  and  extremely  elocutionary  fingers,  to  say 
nothing  of  extremely  attenuated  legs  which  invari 
ably  toed-out,  to  make  more  discernible  the  sil 
houette  of  the  ponderously  booted  feet.  I  have  sev 
eral  dozen  of  these  "li'P  men"  carefully  treasured  in 
an  old  cigar-box.  But  he  soon  lost  interest  in  these 
purely  anthropocentric  creations  and  broadened  out 
into  the  delineation  of  boats  and  cars  and  wheel-bar 
rows  and  rocking-chairs  and  tea-pots,  lying  along 
the  floor  on  his  stomach  for  an  hour  at  a  time,  his 
tongue  moving  sympathetically  with  every  movement 
of  his  pencil.  He  held  the  latter  clutched  close  to  the 
point  by  his  stubby  little  fingers. 

I  had  to  call  a  halt  on  all  such  artistry,  however, 
for  he  startled  me,  one  day,  by  suddenly  going  cross 
eyed.  It  came,  of  course,  from  working  with  his 
nose  too  close  to  the  paper.  I  imagined,  with  a  sink 
ing  heart,  that  it  ^as  an  affliction  which  was  to  stay 


78  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

with  him  for  the  rest  of  his  natural  life.  But  a 
night's  sleep  did  much  to  restore  the  over-taxed  eye- 
muscles  and  before  the  end  of  a  week  they  had  en 
tirely  righted  themselves. 

To-morrow  Dinkie  will  probably  want  to  be  an 
aeronaut,  and  the  next  day  a  cowboy,  and  the  next 
an  Indian  scout,  for  I  notice  that  his  enthusiasms 
promptly  conform  to  the  stimuli  with  which  he 
chances  to  be  confronted.  Last  Sunday  he  asked 
me  to  read  Macaulay's  Horatius  to  him.  I  could 
see,  after  doing  so,  that  it  was  going  to  his  head 
exactly  as  a  second  Clover-Club  cocktail  goes  to  the 
head  of  a  sub-deb.  On  Tuesday,  when  I  went  out 
about  sun-down  to  get  him  to  help  me  gather  the 
eggs,  I  found  that  he  had  made  a  sword  by  nailing 
a  bit  of  stick  across  a  slat  from  the  hen-house,  and 
also  observed  that  he  had  possessed  himself  of  my 
boiler-top.  So  I  held  back,  slightly  puzzled.  But 
later  on,  hearing  much  shouting  and  clouting  and 
banging  of  tin,  I  quietly  investigated  and  found 
Dinkie  in  the  corral-gate,  holding  it  against  all 
comers.  So  earnest  was  he  about  it,  so  rapt  was  he 
in  that  solemn  business  of  warfare,  that  I  decided 
to  slip  away  without  letting  him  see  me.  He  was 
sixteen  long  centuries  away  from  Casa  Grande,  at 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  79 

that  moment.  He  was  afar  off  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tiber,  defending  the  Imperial  City  against  Lars 
Porsena  and  his  footmen.  All  Rome  was  at  his  back, 
cheering  him  on,  and  every  time  his  hen-coop  slat 
thumped  that  shredded  old  poplar  gate-post  some 
proud  son  of  Tuscany  bit  the  dust. 


Sunday  the  Twenty-Fifth 

DUNCAN,  it's  plain  to  see,  is  still  in  the  doldrums. 
He  is  uncommunicative  and  moody  and  goes  about 
his  work  with  a  listlessness  which  is  more  and  more 
disturbing  to  me.  He  surprised  his  wife  the  other 
day  by  addressing  her  as  "Lady  Selkirk,"  for  the 
simple  reason,  he  later  explained,  that  I  propose  to 
be  monarch  of  all  I  survey,  with  none  to  dispute  my 
domain.  And  a  little  later  he  further  intimated  that 
I  was  like  a  miser  with  a  pot  of  gold,  satisfied  to 
live  anywhere  so  long  as  my  precious  family-life 
could  go  clinking  through  my  fingers. 

That  was  last  Sunday — a  perfect  prairie  day — 
when  I  sat  out  on  the  end  of  the  wagon-box,  watch 
ing  Poppsy  and  Dinkie.  I  sat  in  the  warm  sunlight, 
in  a  sort  of  trance,  staring  at  those  two  children  as 
they  went  about  their  solemn  business  of  play.  They 
impressed  me  as  two  husky  and  happy-bodied  little 
beings  and  I  remembered  that  whatever  prairie-life 
had  cost  me,  it  had  not  cost  me  the  health  of  my 
family.  My  two  bairns  had  been  free  of  those  ill- 

80 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  81 

nesses  and  infections  which  come  to  the  city  child, 
and  I  was  glad  enough  to  remember  it.  But  I  was 
unconscious  of  Dinky-Dunk's  cynic  eye  on  me  as  I 
sat  there  brooding  over  my  chicks.  When  he  spoke 
to  me,  in  fact,  I  was  thinking  how  odd  it  was  that 
Josie  Langdon,  on  the  very  day  before  her  marriage, 
should  have  carried  me  down  to  the  lower  end  of 
Fifth  Avenue  and  led  me  into  the  schoolroom  of  the 
Church  of  the  Ascension,  and  asked  me  to  study 
Sorolla's  Triste  Herencia  which  hangs  there. 

I  can  still  see  that  wonderful  canvas  where  the  fore 
shore  of  Valencia,  usually  so  vivacious  with  running 
figures  and  the  brightest  of  sunlight  on  dancing  sails, 
had  been  made  the  wine-dark  sea  of  the  pagan  ques 
tioner  with  the  weight  of  immemorial  human  woe  to 
shadow  it.  Josie  had  been  asking  me  about  marriage 
and  children,  for  even  she  was  knowing  her  more 
solemn  moments  in  the  midst  of  all  that  feverishly 
organized  merriment.  But  I  was  surprised,  when  she 
slipped  a  hand  through  my  arm,  to  see  a  tear  run 
down  her  nose.  So  I  looked  up  again  at  Sorolla's 
picture  of  the  naked  little  cripples  snatching  at  their 
moment's  joy  along  the  water's  edge,  at  his  huddled 
group  of  maimed  and  cast-off  orphans  trying  to  be 
happy  without  quite  knowing  how.  I  can  still  see  the 


82  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

stunted  little  bodies,  naked  in  sunlight  that  seemed 
revealing  without  being  invigorating,  clustered  about 
the  guardian  figure  of  the  tall  old  priest  in  black, 
the  somberly  benignant  old  figure  that  towered  above 
the  little  wrecks  on  crutches  and  faced,  as  majestic 
as  Millet's  Sower,  as  austere  and  unmoved  as  Fate 
itself,  a  dark  sea  overhung  by  a  dark  sky.  Sorolla 
was  great  in  that  picture,  to  my  way  of  thinking. 
He  was  great  in  the  manner  in  which  he  attunes 
nature  to  a  human  mood,  in  which  he  gives  you  the 
sunlight  muffled,  in  some  way,  like  the  sunlight  dur 
ing  a  partial  eclipse,  and  keys  turbulence  down  to 
quietude,  like  the  soft  pedal  that  falls  on  a  noisy 
street  when  a  hearse  goes  by. 

Josie  felt  it,  and  I  felt  it,  that  wordless  thinning 
down  of  radiance,  that  mysterious  holding  back  of 
warmth,  until  it  seemed  to  strike  a  chill  into  the 
bones.  It  was  the  darker  wing  of  Destiny  hovering 
over  man's  head,  deepening  at  the  same  time  that  it 
shadows  the  receding  sky-line,  so  that  even  the 
memory  of  it,  a  thousand  miles  away,  could  drain 
the  jocund  blitheness  out  of  the  open  prairie  and 
give  an  air  of  pathos  and  solitude  to  my  own  chil 
dren  playing  about  my  feet.  Sorolla,  I  remembered, 
had  little  ones  of  his  own.  He  knew.  Life  had 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  83 

taught  him,  and  in  teaching,  had  enriched  his  art. 
For  the  artist,  after  all,  is  the  man  who  cuts  up 
the  loaf  of  his  own  heart,  and  butters  it  with  beauty, 
and  at  tuppence  a  slice  hands  it  to  the  hungry  chil 
dren  of  the  world. 

So  when  Dinky-Dunk  laughed  at  me,  for  going 
into  a  trance  over  my  own  children,  I  merely  smiled 
condoningly  back  at  him.  I  felt  vaguely  sorry  for 
him.  He  wasn't  getting  out  of  them  what  I  was 
getting.  He  was  being  cheated,  in  some  way,  out 
of  the  very  harvest  for  which  he  had  sowed  and 
waited.  And  if  he  had  come  to  me,  in  that  mood 
of  relapse,  if  he  had  come  to  me  with  the  slightest 
trace  of  humility,  with  the  slightest  touch  of  en 
treaty,  on  his  face,  I'd  have  hugged  his  salt-and- 
peppery  old  head  to  my  bosom  and  begged  to  start 
all  over  again  with  a  clean  slate.  .  .  . 

Gershom  and  I  get  along  much  better  than  I  had 
expected.  There's  nothing  wrong  with  the  boy  ex 
cept  his  ineradicable  temptation  to  impart  to  you 
his  gratuitous  tidbits  of  information.  I  can't  object, 
of  course,  to  Gershom  having  a  college  education: 
what  I  object  to  is  his  trying  to  give  me  one.  I 
don't  mind  his  wisdom,  but  I  do  hate  to  see  him  tear 
the  whole  tree  of  knowledge  up  by  the  roots  and 


84  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

floor  one  with  it.  He  has  just  informed  me  that 
there  are  estimated  to  be  30,000,000,000,000  red 
blood  corpuscles  in  this  body  of  mine,  and  I  made 
him  blink  by  solemnly  challenging  him  to  prove  it. 
Quite  frequently  and  quite  sternly,  too,  he  essays  to 
correct  my  English.  He  reproved  me  for  saying: 
"Go  to  it,  Gershom!"  And  he  declared  I  was  in 
error  in  saying  "The  goose  hangs  high,"  as  that 
was  merely  a  vulgar  corruption  for  "The  goose 
whangs  high,"  the  "whanging"  being  the  call  of  the 
wild  geese  high  in  the  air  when  the  weather  is  settled 
and  fair.  We  live  and  learn ! 

But  I  can't  help  liking  this  pedagogic  old  Ger 
shom  who  takes  himself  and  me  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  world  so  seriously.  I  like  him  because  he  shares 
in  my  love  for  Dinkie  and  stands  beside  Peter  him 
self  in  the  fondly  foolish  belief  that  Dinkie  has  some 
where  the  hidden  germ  of  greatness  in  him.  Not 
that  my  boy  is  one  of  those  precocious  little  bounders 
who  are  so  precious  in  the  eyes  of  their  parents  and 
so  odious  to  the  eyes  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  He 
is  a  large-boned  boy,  almost  a  rugged-looking  boy, 
and  it  is  only  I,  knowing  him  as  I  do,  who  can  fathom 
the  sensibilities  housed  in  that  husky  young  body. 
There  is  a  misty  broodiness  in  his  eyes  which  leaves 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  85 

them  indescribably  lovely  to  me  as  I  watch  him  in 
his  moments  of  raptness.  But  that  look  doesn't  last 
long,  for  Dinkie  can  be  rough  in  play  and  at  times 
rough  in  speech,  and  deep  under  the  crust  of  char 
acter  I  imagine  I  see  traces  of  his  Scottish  father  in 
him.  I  watch  with  an  eagle  eye  for  any  outcrop- 
pings  of  that  Caledonian-granite  strain  in  his  make 
up.  I  inspect  him  as  Chinkie  used  to  inspect  his 
fruit-trees  for  San  Jose  scale,  for  if  there  is  any 
promise  of  hardness  or  cruelty  there  I  want  it  killed 
in  the  bud. 

But  I  don't  worry  as  I  used  to,  on  that  score.  He 
may  be  rough-built,  but  moods  cluster  thick  about 
him,  like  butterflies  on  a  shelf  of  broken  rock.  And 
he  is  both  pliable  and  responsive.  I  can  shake  him, 
when  in  the  humor,  by  the  mere  telling  of  a  story.  I 
can  control  his  color,  I  can  excite  him  and  exalt  him, 
and  bring  him  to  the  verge  of  tears,  if  I  care  to, 
by  the  mere  tone  of  my  voice  as  I  read  him  one  of 
his  favorite  tales  out  of  one  of  Peter's  books.  But 
I  shrink,  in  a  way,  from  toying  with  those  feelings. 
It  seems  brutal,  cruel,  merciless.  For  he  is,  after 
all,  a  delicate  instrument,  to  be  treated  with  deli 
cacy.  The  soul  of  him  must  be  kept  packed  away, 
like  a  violin,  in  its  case  of  reserve  well-padded  with 


86 

discretion.  Two  things  I  see  in  him :  tenseness  and 
beauty.  And  these  are  things  which  are  lost,  with 
rough  handling.  He  shrinks  away  from  brutality. 
Always,  when  he  came  to  the  picture  of  Samson  pull 
ing  down  the  pillars  of  the  temple,  in  Whinstane 
Sandy's  big  old  illustrated  Bible,  he  used  to  cover 
with  one  small  hand  a  certain  child  on  the  temple 
steps  as  though  to  protect  to  the  last  that  innocent 
one  from  the  falling  columns  and  cornices. 

But  I'm  worried,  at  times,  about  Dinky-Dunk's 
attitude  toward  the  boy.  There  are  ways  in  which 
he  demands  too  much  from  the  child.  His  father  is 
often  unnecessarily  rough  in  his  play  with  him,  seem 
ing  to  take  a  morose  delight  in  goading  him  to  the 
breaking  point  and  then  lamenting  his  lack  of  grit, 
edging  him  on  to  the  point  of  exasperation  and  then 
heaping  scorn  on  him  for  his  weakness.  More  than 
once  I've  seen  his  father  actually  hurt  him,  although 
the  child  was  too  proud  to  admit  it.  Dinky-Dunk, 
I  think,  really  wants  his  boy  to  be  a  bigger  figure  in 
the  world  than  his  dad.  Milord's  a  middle-aged  man 
now  and  knows  his  limitations.  He  has  realized  just 
how  high  the  supremest  high-water  mark  of  his  life 
will  stand.  And  being  human,  he  must  nurse  his  hu 
man  regrets  over  his  failures  in  life.  So  now  he 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  87 

wishes  to  see  his  thwarted  powers  come  to  fuller  fruit 
in  his  offspring.  I'm  afraid  he'd  even  run  the  risk 
of  sacrificing  the  boy's  happiness  for  the  sake  of 
knowing  Dinkie's  wagon  was  to  be  hitched  to  the 
star  of  success.  For  I  know  my  husband  well  enough 
to  realize  that  he  has  always  hankered  after  worldly 
success,  that  his  god,  if  he  had  any,  has  always  been 
the  god  of  Power.  I,  too,  want  to  see  my  son  a 
success.  But  I  want  him  to  be  happy  first.  I  want 
to  see  him  get  some  of  the  things  I've  been  cheated 
out  of,  that  I've  cheated  myself  out  of.  That's  the 
only  way  now  I  can  get  even  with  life.  I  can't  live 
my  own  days  over  again.  But  I  can  catch  at  the 
trick  of  living  them  over  again  in  my  Dinkie. 


Thursday  the  Twenty-Ninth 

WE  have  arrived  at  an  armistice.  Dinky-Dunk  and 
I.  It  was  forced  on  us,  for  things  couldn't  have 
gone  on  in  the  old  intolerable  manner.  Dinky-Dunk, 
I  fancy,  began  to  realize  that  he  hadn't  been  quite 
fair,  and  started  making  oblique  but  transparent 
enough  efforts  at  appeasement.  When  he  sat  down 
close  beside  me,  and  I  moved  away,  he  said  in  a  spirit 
of  exaggerated  self-accusation:  "I'm  afraid  I've  got 
a  peach-stain  on  my  reputation !"  I  retorted,  at 
that,  that  she  had  never  impressed  me  as  much  of  a 
peach.  Whereupon  he  merely  laughed,  as  though  it 
were  a  joke  out  of  a  Midnight  Revue.  Then  he 
clipped  a  luridly  illustrated  advertisement  of  a  nerve- 
medicine  out  of  his  newspaper  and  pinned  it  on  my 
bedroom  door,  after  I  had  ignored  his  tentative 
knock  thereon  the  night  before.  The  picture  showed 
an  anemic  and  woebegone  couple  haggling  and  shak 
ing  their  fists  at  each  other,  while  a  large  caption 
announced  that  "Thousands  of  Married  Folks  Lead 
a  Cat  and  Dog  Life — Are  Cross,  Crabbed  and 


89 

Grumpy!" — all  of  which  could  be  obviated  if  they 
used  Oxygated  Iron. 

What  made  it  funny,  of  course,  was  the  ridiculous 
ness  of  the  drawing.  Then  Dinky-Dunk,  right  be 
fore  the  blushing  Gershom,  accused  me  of  being  a 
love-piker.  I  could  sniff  which  way  the  wind  was 
blowing,  but  I  sat  tight.  Then,  to  cap  the  climax, 
my  husband  announced  that  he  had  something  for 
me  which  was  surely  going  to  melt  my  mean  old 
prairie  heart.  And  late  that  afternoon  he  came 
trundling  up  to  Casa  Grande  with  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  an  old  prairie-schooner. 

It  startled  me,  when  I  first  caught  sight  of  it.  But 
its  acquisition  was  not  so  miraculous  as  it  might 
have  seemed.  Dinky-Dunk,  who  is  a  born  dickerer, 
has  been  trading  some  of  his  ranch-stock  for  town- 
lots  on  the  outskirts  of  Buckhorn.  On  the  back  of 
one  of  these  lots  stood  a  tumble-down  wooden  build 
ing,  and  hidden  away  in  this  building  was  the  prairie- 
schooner.  Something  about  it  had  caught  his  fancy, 
so  he  had  insisted  that  it  be  included  in  the  deal. 
And  home  he  brought  it,  with  Tithonus  and  Tumble- 
Weed  yoked  to  its  antique  tongue  and  his  own  Stet- 
soned  figure  high  on  the  driving  seat.  They  had  told 
Dinky-Dunk  it  wasn't  a  really-truly  authentic  prai- 


90  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

rie-schooner,  since  practically  all  of  the  trekking 
north  of  the  Fiftieth  Parallel  has  been  done  by  means 
of  the  Red  River  cart.  But  Dinky-Dunk,  after  look 
ing  more  carefully  over  the  heavy-timbered  running- 
gear  and  the  cumbersome  iron-work,  and  discovering 
even  the  sturdy  hooks  under  its  belly  from  which  the 
pails  and  pots  of  earlier  travelers  must  have  hung, 
concluded  that  it  was  one  of  the  genuine  old-timers, 
one  of  the  "Murphies"  once  driven  by  a  "bull- 
whacker"  and  drawn  by  "wheelers"  and  "pointers." 
Where  it  originally  came  from,  Heaven  only  knows. 
But  it  had  been  used,  five  years  before,  for  a  cen 
tenary  procession  in  the  provincial  capital  and  had 
emerged  into  the  open  again  last  summer  for  a  town- 
booming  Rodeo  twenty  miles  down  the  steel  from 
Buckhorn.  It  looked  like  the  dinosaur  skeleton  in 
the  Museum  of  Natural  History,  with  every  vestige 
of  its  tarpaulin  top  gone.  But  Whinnie  has  already 
sewed  together  a  canvas  covering  for  its  weather- 
beaten  old  roof-ribs,  and  has  put  clean  wheat-straw 
in  its  box-bottom,  so  that  it  makes  a  kingly  place 
for  my  two  kiddies  to  play.  I  even  spotted  Dinkie, 
enthroned  high  on  the  big  driving-seat,  with  a 
broken  binder-whip  in  his  hand,  imagining  he  was 
one  of  the  original  Forty-Niners  pioneering  along 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  91 

the  unknown  frontiers  of  an  unknown  land.  I  could 
see  him  duck  at  imaginary  arrows  and  frenziedly 
defend  his  family  from  imaginary  Sioux  with  an 
imaginary  musket.  And  I  stood  beside  it  this  morn 
ing,  dreaming  of  the  adventures  it  must  have  lum 
bered  through,  of  the  freight  it  must  have  carried 
and  the  hopes  it  must  have  ferried  as  it  once  crawled 
westward  along  the  floor  of  the  world,  from  water- 
hole  to  lonely  water-hole.  I've  been  wondering 
if  certain  perforations  in  its  side-boards  can  be  bul 
let-holes  and  if  certain  dents  and  abrasions  in  its 
timbers  mean  the  hostile  arrows  of  skulking  Apaches 
when  women  and  children  crouched  low  behind  the 
ramparts  of  this  tiny  wooden  fortress.  I  can't  help 
picturing  what  those  women  and  children  had  to 
endure,  and  how  trivial,  after  all,  are  our  puny  hard 
ships  compared  with  theirs. 

And  I  don't  intend  to  dwell  on  those  hardships. 
I'm  holding  out  the  hand  of  compromise  to  my  fel- 
low-trekker.  Existence  is  only  a  prairie-schooner, 
and  we  have  to  accommodate  ourselves  to  it.  And 
I  thank  Heaven  now  that  I  can  see  things  more  clearly 
and  accept  them  more  quietly.  That's  a  lesson  Time 
teaches  us.  And  Father  Time,  after  all,  has  to  hand 
us  something  to  make  up  for  so  mercilessly  permit- 


92  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

ting  us  to  grow  old.  It  leaves  us  more  tolerant. 
We're  not  allowed  to  demand  more  life,  but  we  can 
at  least  ask  for  more  light.  So  I  intend  to  be  cool- 
headedly  rational  about  it  all.  I'm  going  to  keep 
Reason  on  her  throne.  I'm  going  to  be  a  bitter 
ender,  in  at  least  one  thing:  I'm  going  to  stick  to 
my  Dinky-Dunk  to  the  last  ditch.  I'm  going  to 
patch  up  the  old  top  and  forget  the  old  scars.  For 
we're  in  the  same  schooner,  and  we  must  make  the 
most  of  it.  And  if  I  have  to  eat  my  pot  of  honey 
on  the  grave  of  all  our  older  hopes,  I'm  at  least 
going  to  dig  away  at  that  pot  until  its  bottom  is 
scraped  clean.  I'm  going  to  remain  the  neck-or- 
nothing  woman  I  once  prided  myself  on  being.  I'm 
even  going  to  overlook  Dinky-Dunk's  casual  cruelty 
in  announcing,  when  I  half  -  j  okingly  inquired  why 
he  preferred  other  women  to  his  own  Better-Half, 
that  no  horse  eats  hay  after  being  turned  out  to 
fresh  grass.  I'm  going  on,  I  repeat,  no  matter  what 
happens.  I'm  going  on  to  the  desperate  end,  like 
my  own  Dinkie  with  the  chocolate-cake  when  I  warned 
him  he'd  burst  if  he  dared  to  eat  another  piece  and 
he  responded:  "Then  pass  the  cake,  Mummy — and 
everybody  stand  back!" 


Tuesday  the  Fourth 

Sursum  corda  is  the  word — so  here  goes!  I  am 
determined  to  be  blithe  and  keep  the  salt  of  humor 
sprinkled  thick  across  the  butter-crock  of  conces 
sion.  Dinky-Dunk  watches  me  with  a  guarded  and 
wary  eye  and  Pauline  Augusta  does  not  always  ap 
prove  of  me.  Yesterday,  when  I  got  on  Briquette 
and  made  that  fire-eater  jump  the  two  rain-barrels 
put  end  to  end  Dinky-Dunk  told  me  I  was  too  old 
to  be  taking  a  chance  like  that.  So  I  promptly  and 
deliberately  turned  a  somersault  on  the  prairie-sod, 
just  to  show  him  I  wasn't  the  old  lady  he  was  trying 
to  make  me  out.  Gershom,  who'd  just  got  back 
with  the  children  and  was  unhitching  Calamity  Kate, 
retreated  with  his  eyebrows  up,  toward  the  stable. 
And  on  the  youthful  face  of  Pauline  Augusta  I  saw 
nothing  but  pained  incredulity  touched  with  reproof, 
for  Poppsy  is  not  a  believer  in  the  indecorous.  She 
has  herself  staidly  intimated  that  she'd  prefer  the 
rest  of  the  family  to  address  her  as  "Pauline  Au 
gusta"  instead  of  "Poppsy"  which  still  so  unwit- 

93 


94  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

tingly  creeps  into  our  talk.  So  hereafter  we  must 
be  more  careful.  For  Pauline  Augusta  can  already 
sew  a  fine  seam  and  array  her  seven  dolls  with  a 
preciseness  and  neatness  which  is  to  be  highly  com 
mended. 

On  Saturday,  when  we  motored  into  Buckhorn  for 
supplies,  I  escorted  Pauline  Augusta  to  Hunk 
Granby,  the  town  barber,  to  have  her  hair  cut  Dutch. 
Her  lip  quivered  and  she  gave  every  indication  of 
an  outbreak,  for  she  was  mortally  afraid  of  that 
strange  man  and  his  still  stranger  clipping-machine. 
But  I  spotted  a  concert-guitar  on  a  bench  at  the 
back  of  Hunk's  emporium  and  as  it  was  the  noon- 
hour  and  there  was  no  audience,  I  rendered  a  jazz 
obbligato  to  the  snip  of  the  scissors. 

"Say,  Birdie,  you'll  sure  have  me  buck  and  wing 
dancin'  if  you  keep  that  up !"  remarked  the  man  of 
the  shears.  I  merely  smiled  and  gave  him  Texas 
Tommy,  cum  gusto,  whereupon  he  acknowledged  he 
was  having  difficulty  in  making  his  feet  behave.  We 
became  quite  a  companionable  little  family,  in  fact, 
as  the  bobbing  process  went  on,  and  when  Dinky- 
Dunk  called  for  us  as  he'd  promised  he  was  patently 
scandalized  to  find  his  superannuated  old  soul-mate 
sight-reading  When  Katy  Couldn't  Katy  Wouldn't 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  95 

— it  was  a  new  one  to  me — in  the  second  ragged 
plush  shaving-chair  of  a  none  too  clean  barber-shop 
festooned  with  lithographs  which  would  have  made 
old  Anthony  Comstock  turn  in  his  grave.  But  you 
have  to  be  feathered  to  the  toes  like  a  ptarmigan  in 
this  northern  country  so  that  rough  ways  and  rough 
winds  can't  strike  a  chill  into  you.  The  barber,  in 
fact,  refused  to  take  any  money  for  Dutching  my 
small  daughter's  hair,  proclaiming  that  the  music  was 
more  than  worth  it.  But  my  husband,  with  a  dan 
gerous  light  in  his  eye,  insisted  on  leaving  four  bits 
on  the  edge  of  the  shelf  loaded  down  with  bottled 
beautifiers,  and  escorted  us  out  to  the  muddy  old 
devil-wagon  where  Dinkie  sat  awaiting  us. 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  said  with  a  perfectly  straight 
face  as  we  climbed  in,  "what  is  it  gives  me  such  a 
mysterious  influence  over  men?" 

Instead  of  answering  me,  he  merely  ground  his 
gears  as  though  they  had  been  his  own  teeth.  So  I 
repeated  my  question. 

"Why  don't  you  ask  that  school-teacher  of 
yours?"  he  demanded. 

"But  what,"  I  inquired,  "has  Gershom  got  to  do 
with  it?" 

He  turned  and  inspected  me  with  such  a  pointed 


96  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

stare  that  we  nearly  ran  into  a  Bain  wagon  full  of 
bagged  grain. 

"You  don't  suppose  I  can't  see  that  that  bean 
pole's  fallen  in  love  with  you?"  he  rudely  and  rau 
cously  challenged. 

"Why,  I  feel  exactly  like  a  mother  to  that  poor 
boy,"  I  innocently  protested. 

"Mother  nothing!"  snorted  my  lord  and  master. 
"Any  fool  could  see  he's  going  mushy  on  you !" 

I  pretended  to  be  less  surprised  than  I  really  was, 
but  it  gave  me  considerable  to  think  over.  My  hus 
band  was  wrong,  in  a  way,  but  no  woman  feels  bad 
at  the  thought  that  somebody  is  fond  of  her.  It's 
nice  to  know  there's  a  heart  or  two  at  which  one  can 
still  warm  one's  outstretched  hands.  The  short-cut 
to  ruin,  with  a  man,  is  the  knowledge  that  women 
are  fond  of  him.  But  let  a  woman  know  that  she  is 
not  unloved  and  she  walks  the  streets  of  Heaven,  to 
say  nothing  of  nearly  breaking  her  neck  to  make 
herself  worthy  of  those  transporting  affections. 

But  I  soon  had  other  things  to  think  of,  that 
afternoon,  for  Dinkie  and  I  had  a  little  secret  shop 
ping  to  do.  And  in  the  midst  of  it  I  caught  the 
familiar  tawny  look  which  occasionally  comes  into 
my  man-child's  eyes.  It's  the  look  of  dreaming,  the 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  97 

look  of  brooding  wildness  where  some  unknown  Celtic 
great-great-grandfather  of  a  great-great-grand 
father  stirs  in  his  moorland  grave  like  a  collie-dog 
in  his  afternoon  sleep.  And  it  all  arose  out  of  noth 
ing  more  than  a  blind  beggar  sitting  on  an  upturned 
nail-keg  at  the  edge  of  the  sidewalk  and  rather  mi 
raculously  playing  a  mouth-organ  and  a  guitar  at 
one  and  the  same  time.  The  guitar  was  a  dog-eared 
old  instrument  that  had  most  decidedly  seen  better 
days,  stained  and  bruised  and  greasy-looking  along 
the  shank.  The  mouth-organ  was  held  in  position 
by  two  wires  that  went  about  the  beggar's  neck,  to 
leave  his  hands  free  for  strumming  on  the  larger  in 
strument.  The  music  he  made  was  simple  enough, 
rudimentary  old  waltz-tunes  and  plaintive  old  airs 
that  I  hadn't  heard  for  years.  But  I  could  see  it 
go  straight  to  the  head  of  my  boy.  His  intent  young 
face  took  on  the  fierce  emptiness  of  a  Barres  lion 
overlooking  some  time-worn  desert.  He  forgot  me, 
and  he  forgot  the  shopping  that  had  kept  him  awake 
about  half  the  night,  and  he  forgot  Buckhorn  and 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  small  boy  on  the  streets  of  a 
bald  little  prairie  town.  He  was  thousands  of  years 
and  thousands  of  miles  away  from  me.  He  was  a 
king's  son  in  Babylon,  commanding  the  court-musi- 


98  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

cians  to  make  sweet  discourse  for  him.  He  was  Saul 
harkening  to  David.  He  was  a  dreamy-eyed  Pict 
listening  to  music  wafted  at  dusk  from  a  Roman 
camp  about  which  helmeted  sentries  paced.  He  was 
a  medieval  prince,  falsely  imprisoned,  leaning  from 
dark  and  lonely  towers  to  catch  the  strains  of  some 
wandering  troubadour  from  his  native  Southlands. 
He  was  a  Magyar  chieftain  listening  to  the  moun 
tain-side  music  of  valleyed  goat-herders  with  a  touch 
of  madness  to  it.  It  engulfed  him  and  entranced 
him  and  awoke  ancestral  tom-toms  in  his  blood.  And 
I  waited  beside  him  until  the  afternoon  sunlight  grew 
thinner  and  paler  and  my  legs  grew  tired,  for  I  knew 
that  his  hungry  little  soul  was  being  fed.  His  eye 
met  mine,  when  it  was  all  over,  but  he  had  nothing 
to  say.  I  could  see,  however,  that  he  had  been 
stirred  to  the  depths, — and  by  a  tin  mouth-organ 
and  a  greasy-sided  guitar ! 

To-night  I  found  Dinkie  poring  over  the  pictures 
in  my  Knight  edition  of  Shakespeare.  He  seemed 
especially  impressed,  as  I  stopped  and  looked  over 
his  shoulder,  by  a  steel  engraving  of  Gerome's  Death 
of  Ccesar,  where  the  murdered  emperor  lies  stretched 
out  on  the  floor  of  the  Forum,  now  all  but  empty, 
with  the  last  of  the  Senators  crowding  out  through 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  99 

the  door.  Two  of  the  senatorial  chairs  are  over 
turned,  and  Caesar's  throne  lies  face-down  on  the 
dais  steps.  So  Dinkie  began  asking  questions  about 
a  drama  which  he  could  not  quite  comprehend.  But 
they  were  as  nothing  to  the  questions  he  asked  when 
he  turned  to  another  of  the  Gerome  pictures,  this 
one  being  the  familiar  old  Cleopatra  and  Ccesar.  He 
wanted  to  know  why  the  lady  hadn't  more  clothes 
on,  and  why  the  big  black  man  was  hiding  down 
behind  her,  and  what  Caesar  was  writing  a  letter  for, 
and  why  he  was  looking  at  the  lady  the  way  he  did. 
So,  glancing  about  to  make  sure  that  Dinky-Dunk 
was  within  ear-shot,  I  did  my  best  to  explain  the 
situation  to  little  Dinkie. 

"Caesar,  my  son,  was  a  man  who  set  out  in  the 
world  to  be  a  great  conqueror.  But  when  he  got 
quite  bald,  as  you  may  see  by  the  picture,  and  had 
reached  middle  age,  he  forgot  about  being  a  great 
conqueror.  He  even  forgot  about  being  so  com 
fortably  middle-aged  and  that  it  was  not  easy  for 
a  man  of  his  years  to  tumble  gracefully  into  love, 
for  those  romantic  impulses,  my  son,  are  associated 
more  with  irresponsible  youth  and  are  apt  to  be 
called  by  rather  an  ugly  name  when  they  occur  in 
advanced  years.  But  Caesar  fell  in  love  with  the  lady 


100  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

you  see  in  the  picture,  whose  name  was  Cleopatra 
and  who  was  one  of  the  greatest  man-eaters  that 
ever  came  out  of  Egypt.  She  had  a  weakness  for 
big  strong  men,  and  although  certain  authorities 
have  claimed  that  she  was  a  small  and  hairy  person 
with  a  very  uncertain  temper,  she  undoubtedly  set  a 
very  good  table  and  made  her  gentlemen  friends  very 
comfortable,  for  Csesar  stayed  feasting  and  forget 
ting  himself  for  nearly  a  year  with  her.  It  must 
have  been  very  pleasant,  for  Caesar  loved  power,  and 
intended  to  be  one  of  the  big  men  of  his  time.  But 
the  lady  also  loved  power,  and  was  undoubtedly  glad 
to  see  that  she  could  make  Ca?sar  forget  about  going 
home,  though  it  was  too  bad  that  he  forgot,  for 
always,  even  after  he  had  lived  to  write  about  all  the 
great  things  he  had  done  in  the  world,  people  remem 
bered  more  about  his  rather  absurd  infatuation  for 
the  lady  than  about  all  the  battles  he  had  won  and 
all  the  prizes  he  had  captured.  And  the  lady,  of 
course " 

But  I  was  interrupted  at  this  point.  And  it  was 
by  Dinky-Dunk. 

"Oh,  hell !"  he  said  as  he  flung  down  his  paper  and 
strode  out  into  the  other  room.  And  those  exits,  I 
remembered,  were  getting  to  be  a  bit  of  a  habit  with 
my  harried  old  Diddums. 


Sunday  the  Fifth 

THE  Day  of  Rest  seems  to  be  the  only  day  left  to 
me  now  for  my  writing.  There  are  no  idlers  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Casa  Grande.  The  days  are  be 
coming  incredibly  long,  but  they  still  seem  over-short 
for  all  there  is  to  do.  The  men  are  much  too  busy 
on  the  land  to  give  material  thought  to  any 
thing  so  womanish  as  a  kitchen-garden.  So  I  have 
my  own  garden  to  see  to  And  sometimes  I  work 
there  until  I'm  almost  ready  to  drop.  On  a  couple 
of  nights,  recently,  when  it  came  watering-time, 
even  these  endless  evenings  had  slipped  into  such 
darkness  that  I  could  scarcely  see  the  plants  I  was 
so  laboriously  irrigating  by  hand.  It  wasn't  until 
the  water  turned  the  soil  black  that  the  growing 
green  stood  pallidly  out  against  the  mothering  dark 
earth.  .  .  .  But  it  is  delightful  work.  I  really  love 
it.  And  I  love  to  see  things  growing.  After  the 
bringing  up  of  a  family,  the  bringing  up  of  a  garden 
surely  comes  next. 

Yet  too  much  work,  I  find,  can  make  tempers  a 
101 


102  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

trifle  short.  I  spoke  rather  sharply  to  Dinky-Dunk 
yesterday  regarding  the  folly  of  leaving  firearms 
about  the  house  where  children  can  reach  them.  And 
he  was  equally  snappy  as  he  flung  his  ugly  old  Colt 
in  its  ugly  old  holster  up  over  the  top  corner  of 
our  book-cabinet.  So,  to  get  even  with  him,  when 
Dinkie  came  in  with  some  sort  of  wide-petaled  field- 
flower  and  asked  if  I  didn't  want  my  fortune  told,  I 
announced  I  rather  fancied  it  was  pretty  well  told 
already.  .  .  .  Scotty,  by  the  way,  now  follows 
Dinkie  to  school  and  waits  outside  and  comes  loping 
home  with  him  again.  And  my  two  bairns  have  a 
new  and  highly  poetic  occupation.  It  is  that  of 
patiently  garnering  youthful  potato-bugs  and 
squashing  the  accumulated  harvest  between  two 
bricks. 


Sunday  the  Twelfth 

I  HAVE  been  examining  Gershom  with  a  more  in 
terested  eye.  And  when  he  changed  color,  under  that 
inspection,  I  apologized  for  making  him  blush.  And 
as  that  only  added  to  his  embarrassment,  I  artlessly 
asked  him  what  a  blush  really  was.  That,  of  course, 
was  throwing  the  rabbit  straight  back  into  the  brier- 
patch,  as  far  as  Gershom  was  concerned.  For  he 
promptly  and  meticulously  informed  me  that  a  blush 
was  a  miniature  epilepsy,  a  vasomotor  impulse  lead 
ing  to  the  dilation  or  constriction  of  the  facial  blood 
vessels,  some  psychologists  even  claiming  the  blush 
to  be  a  vestigial  survival  of  the  prehistoric  flight- 
effort  of  the  heart,  coming  from  the  era  of  marriage 
by  capture,  when  to  be  openly  admired  meant  im 
minent  danger. 

"That  isn't  a  bit  pretty,"  I  told  Gershom.  "It's 
as  horrid  as  what  my  husband  said  about  hand 
shaking  originating  in  man's  desire  to  be  dead  sure 
his  gentleman  friend  didn't  have  a  knife  up  his  sleeve, 
for  use  before  the  greeting  was  over.  It  would  have 

103 


104  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

been  so  much  nicer,  Gershom,  if  you  could  have  told 
me  that  the  first  blush  was  born  on  the  same  day  as 
the  first  kiss." 

"Kissing,"  that  youth  solemnly  informed  me,  "was 
quite  unknown  to  primitive  man.  It  evolved,  in 
fact,  out  of  the  entirely  self-protective  practice  of 
smelling,  to  determine  the  health  of  a  prospective 
mate,  though  this  in  turn  evolved  into  the  cere 
monial  habit  of  the  rubbing  together  of  noses,  which 
is  still  the  form  of  affectionate  salutation  largely 
prevalent  among  the  natives  of  the  South  Sea  Is 
lands." 

"What  a  perfectly  horrible  origin  for  such  a  heav 
enly  pastime,"  I  just  as  solemnly  announced  to  Ger 
shom,  who  studied  me  with  a  stern  and  guarded  eye, 
and  having  partaken  of  his  eleventh  flap-jack,  es 
caped  to  the  stable  and  the  matutinal  task  of  har 
nessing  Calamity  Kate. 


SUMMER  is  here,  in  earnest,  and  the  last  few  days 
have  been  hot  and  windless.  School  is  over,  for  the 
next  eight  weeks,  and  I  shall  have  my  kiddies  close 
beside  me.  Gershom,  after  a  ten-day  trip  down  to 
Minneapolis  for  books  and  clothes,  is  going  to  come 
back  to  Casa  Grande  and  help  Dinky-Dunk  on  the 
land,  as  long  as  the  holidays  last.  He  thinks  it  will 
build  him  up  a  bit.  He  is  also  solemnly  anxious  to 
study  music.  He  feels  it  would  round  out  his  ac 
complishments,  which,  he  acknowledged,  have  threat 
ened  to  become  overwhelmingly  scientific.  So  I'm  to 
give  Gershom  music  lessons  in  exchange  for  his  tu 
toring  Dinkie.  They  will  be  rather  awful,  I'm  afraid, 
for  Gershom  has  about  as  much  music  in  his  honest 
old  soul  as  Calamity  Kate.  I  may  not  teach  him 
much.  But  all  the  time,  I  know,  I  will  be  learning 
a  great  deal  from  Gershom.  He  informed  me,  last 
night,  that  he  had  carefully  computed  that  the  Bible 
mentioned  nineteen  different  precious  stones,  one 
hundred  and  four  trees  or  plants,  six  metals,  thirty- 

105 


106  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

five  animals,  thirty-nine  birds,  six  fishes,  twenty  in 
sects,  and  eleven  reptiles. 

As  I've  already  said,  summer  is  here.  But  it 
doesn't  seem  to  mean  as  much  to  me  as  it  used  to, 
for  my  interests  have  been  taken  away  from  the  land 
and  more  and  more  walled  up  about  my  family. 
Dinky-Dunk's  grain,  however,  has  come  along  satis 
factorily,  and  there  is  every  promise  of  a  good  crop. 
Yet  this  entirely  fails  to  elate  my  husband.  Every 
small  mischance  is  a  sort  of  music-cue  nowadays  to 
start  him  singing  about  the  monotony  of  prairie-life. 
Ranching,  he  protests,  isn't  the  easy  game  it  used  to 
be,  now  that  cattle  can't  be  fattened  on  the  open 
ra  "gje  c-ftd  now  that  wheat  itself  is  so  much  lower  in 
price.  One  has  to  work  for  one-'s  money,  and  watch 
every  dollar.  And  my  Diddums  keeps  railing  about 
the  government  doing  so  little  for  the  farmer  and 
driving  the  men  off  the  land  into  the  cities.  He  has 
fallen  into  the  habit  of  protesting  he  can  see  nothing 
much  in  life  as  a  back-township  hay-tosser  and  that 
all  the  big  chances  are  now  in  the  big  centers.  I 
had  been  hoping  that  this  was  a  new  form  of  spring- 
fever  which  would  eventually  work  its  way  out  of  his 
system.  But  I  can  see  now  that  the  matter  is  some 
thing  more  mental  than  physical.  He  hasn't  lost 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  107 

his  strength,  but  he  has  lost  his  driving  power.  He 
is  healthy  enough,  Heaven  knows.  Indeed,  he  im 
presses  me  as  being  a  bit  too  much  that  way,  for  he 
has  quite  lost  his  old-time  lean  and  hungry  look  and 
betrays  a  tendency  to  take  on  a  ventral  contour  un 
mistakably  aldermanic.  He  may  be  heavy,  but  he 
is  hard-muscled  and  brown  as  an  old  meerschaum* 
There  is  a  canker,  however,  somewhere  about  the  core 
of  his  heart.  And  I  can  see  him  more  clearly  than 
I  used  to.  He  is  a  strong  man,  but  he  is  a  strong 
man  without  earnestness.  And  being  such,  I  vaguely 
apprehend  in  him  some  splendid  failure.  For  the 
wings  that  soar  to  success  in  this  world  are  plumed 
with  faith  and  feathered  with  conviction. 

It  did  not  surprise  me  this  morning  when  Dinky- 
Dunk  announced  that  he  felt  a  trifle  stale  and  sug 
gested  that  the  family  take  a  holiday  on  Tuesday 
and  trek  out  to  Dead-Horse  Lake  for  the  day. 
We're  to  hitch  Tumble-Weed  and  Tithonus  to  the 
old  prairie-schooner — for  we'll  be  taking  side-trails 
where  no  car  could  venture — and  pike  off  for  a 
whole  blessed  day  of  care-free  picnicking.  So  to 
morrow  Struthers  and  I  will  be  solemnly  busy  in 
the  kitchen  concocting  suitable  dishes  to  be  taken 
along  in  the  old  grub-box,  and  when  that  is  over 


108  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

we'll  patch  together  something  in  the  form  of  bath 
ing-suits,  for  there'll  be  a  chance  for  a  dip  in  the 
slough-water,  and  our  kiddies  have  arrived  at  an 
age  imposing  fit  and  proper  apparel  on  their  sadly 
pagan  but  chastened  parents. 


Wednesday  th#  Fifth 

WE  have  had  our  day  at  Dead-Horse  Lake,  but 
it  wasn't  the  happy  event  I  had  anticipated.  Worldly 
happiness,  I  begin  to  feel,  usually  dies  a-borning:  it 
makes  me  think  of  wistaria-bloom,  for  invariably  one 
end  is  withering  away  before  the  other  end  is  even 
in  flower.  At  any  rate,  we  were  off  early,  the  weather 
was  perfect,  and  the  sky  was  an  inverted  tureen  of 
lazulite  blue.  Dinkie  drove  the  team  part  of  the 
way,  his  dad  smoked  beside  him  up  on  the  big  driv 
ing-seat,  and  I  raised  my  voice  in  song  until  Pauline 
Augusta  fell  asleep  and  had  to  be  bedded  down  in 
the  wagon-straw  and  covered  with  a  blanket. 

Dead-Horse  Lake  is  really  a  slough,  dolorously 
named  because  a  near-by  rancher  once  lost  eight 
horses  therein,  the  foolish  animals  wandering  out  on 
Jce  that  was  too  thin  to  hold  them  up. 

We  were  hungry  by  the  time  we  had  hobbled  out 
our  teams  and  gathered  wood  and  made  a  fire.  And 
after  dinner  Dinky-Dunk  fell  asleep  and  the  children 

109 


110  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

and  I  tried  to  weave  a  willow  basket,  which  wasn't 
a  success.  Poppsy,  in  fact,  cut  her  finger  with  her 
pater's  pocket-knife  and  because  of  this  physical  dis 
ability  declined  to  don  her  bathing-suit  when  we 
made  ready  for  the  water. 

The  slough-water  was  enticingly  warm,  under  the 
hot  July  sun,  and  we  ventured  in  at  the  west  end 
where  a  firmer  lip  of  sand  and  alkali  gave  us  foot 
ing.  And  I  enjoyed  the  swim,  although  Dinky-Dunk 
made  fun  of  my  improvised  bathing-suit.  It  seemed 
like  old  times,  to  bask  lazily  in  the  sun  and  float 
about  on  my  back  with  my  fingers  linked  under  my 
head.  My  lord  and  master  even  acknowledged  that 
my  figure  wasn't  so  bad  as  he  had  expected,  in  a  lady 
of  my  years.  I  splashed  him  for  that,  and  he  dove 
for  my  ankles,  and  nearly  drowned  me  before  I  could 
get  away. 

It  was  all  light-hearted  enough,  until  Dinky-Dunk 
happened  to  notice  that  Dinkie  wasn't  enjoying  the 
water  as  an  able-bodied  youngster  ought.  The  child, 
in  fact,  was  afraid  of  it — which  was  only  natural, 
remembering  what  a  land-bird  he  had  been  all  his 
life.  His  father,  apparently,  decided  to  carry  him 
out  and  give  him  a  swimming-lesson. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  111 

I  was  on  shore  by  this  time,  trying  to  sun  out  my 
sodden  mop  of  hair,  which  I  had  fondly  imagined 
I  could  keep  dry.  I  heard  Dinkie's  cry  as  his  father 
captured  him,  and  I  called  out  to  Dinky-Dunk, 
through  my  combed  out  tresses,  to  have  a  heart. 

Dinky-Dunk  called  back  that  the  Indian  way,  after 
all,  was  the  only  way  to  teach  a  youngster.  I  didn't 
give  much  thought  to  the  matter  until  the  two  of 
them  were  out  in  deeper  water  and  I  heard  Dinkie's 
scream  of  stark  terror.  It  came  home  to  me  then 
that  the  Indian  method  in  such  things  was  to  tos? 
the  child  into  deep  water  and  leave  him  there  to 
struggle  for  his  life. 

Dinky-Dunk,  I  suppose,  hadn't  intended  to  do 
quite  that.  But  the  boy  was  naturally  terrified  at 
being  carried  out  beyond  his  depth,  and  when  I 
looked  up  I  could  see  his  bony  little  body  struggling 
to  free  itself.  That  timidity,  I  take  it,  angered  the 
boy's  father.  And  he  intended  to  cure  it.  He  was 
doing  his  best,  in  fact,  to  fling  the  clutching  and 
clawing  little  body  away  from  him  when  I  heard  those 
repeated  short  screams  of  horror  and  promptly  took 
a  hand  in  the  matter.  Something  snapped  in  my 
skull,  and  I  saw  red.  I  hated  my  husband  for  what 
he  was  doing.  I  hated  him  for  the  mere  thought 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

that  he  could  do  it.  And  I  hated  him  for  calling 
out  that  this  was  what  people  got  by  mollycoddling 
their  children. 

But  that  didn't  stop  me.  I  made  for  Dinky-Dunk 
like  a  hundred-weight  of  wildcats.  I  went  through 
the  water  like  a  hell-diver,  and  without  quite  know 
ing  what  I  was  doing  I  got  hold  of  him  and  tried  to 
garrote  him.  I  don't  remember  what  I  said,  but  I 
have  a  hazy  idea  it  was  not  the  most  ladylike  of  lan 
guage.  He  stared  at  me,  as  I  tore  Dinkie  away  from 
him,  stared  at  me  with  a  hard  and  slightly  incredu 
lous  eye.  For  I'm  afraid  I  was  ready  to  fight  with 
my  teeth  and  nails,  if  need  be,  and  I  suppose  my  ex 
pression  wasn't  altogether  angelic.  We  were  both 
shaking,  at  any  rate,  when  we  got  back  to  dry  land. 
Dinky-Dunk  stood  staring  at  us,  for  a  silent  mo 
ment  or  two,  with  a  look  of  black  disgust  on  his 
wet  face.  I'm  even  afraid  it  was  something  more 
than  disgust.  Then  he  strode  away  and  proceeded 
to  dress  on  the  other  side  of  the  prairie-schooner, 
without  so  much  as  a  second  look  at  us.  And  then 
he  went  off  for  the  horses,  absenting  himself  a  quite 
unnecessary  length  of  time.  But  I  took  advantage 
of  that  to  have  a  talk  with  Dinkie. 

"Dinkie,"  I  said,  "you  and  I  are  going  to  walk 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  113 

out  into  that  water,  and  this  time  you're  not  going 
to  be  afraid!" 

I  could  see  his  eye  searching  mine,  although  he  did 
not  speak. 

I  put  one  hand  on  the  wet  tangle  of  his  hair. 

"Will  you  come?"  I  asked  him. 

He  took  a  deep  breath.  Then  he  looked  at  the 
slough-water.  Then  he  looked  back  into  my  eyes. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  though  I  noticed  his  lips  were  not 
so  red  as  usual. 

So  side  by  side  and  hand  in  hand  the  two  of  us 
walked  out  into  Dead-Horse  Lake.  His  eyes  ques 
tioned  me,  once,  as  the  water  came  up  about  his  arm 
pits.  But  he  shut  his  teeth  tight  and  made  no  effort 
to  draw  back.  I  could  see  the  involuntary  spasms 
of  his  chest  as  that  terrifying  flood  closed  in  about 
his  little  body,  yet  he  was  ready  enough  to  show  me 
he  wasn't  a  coward.  And  when  I  saw  that  he  had 
met  and  faced  his  ordeal  I  turned  him  about  and 
led  him  quietly  back  to  land.  We  were  both  prouder 
and  happier  for  what  had  just  happened.  We  didn't 
even  need  to  talk  about  it,  for  each  knew  that  the 
other  understood.  What  still  disturbs  me,  though, 
is  something  not  in  my  boy's  make-up,  but  in  my  own. 
During  the  long  and  silent  drive  home  I  noticed  a 


114  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

mark  on  my  husband's  neck.  And  I  was  the  terma 
gant  who  must  have  put  it  there,  though  I  have  no 
memory  of  doing  so.  But  from  it  I  realize  that  I 
haven't  the  control  over  myself  every  civilized  and 
self-respecting  woman  should  have.  I  begin  to  see 
that  I  can't  altogether  trust  myself  where  my  female- 
of-the-species  affections  are  involved.  I'm  no  bet 
ter,  I'm  afraid,  than  the  Bengal  tigress  which  Dinky- 
Dunk  once  intimated  I  was,  the  Bengal  tigress  who 
will  battle  so  unreasoningly  for  her  offspring.  It 
may  be  natural  in  mothers,  whether  they  wear  fur  or 
feathers  or  lisle-thread  stockings — but  it  worries  me. 
I  was  an  engine  running  wild.  And  when  you  run 
wild  you  are  apt  to  run  into  catastrophe. 


Friday  the  Seventh 

DINKY-DUNK  is  on  his  dignity.  He  has  put  a 
fence  around  himself  to  keep  me  at  a  distance,  the 
same  as  he  puts  a  fence  around  his  haystacks  to 
keep  off  the  cattle.  We  are  coolly  polite  to  each 
other,  but  that  is  as  far  as  it  goes.  There  is  some 
thing  radically  wrong  with  this  home,  as  a  home,  but 
I  seem  helpless  to  put  the  matter  right.  It's  about 
all  I  have  left,  in  this  life  of  mine,  but  I'm  in  some 
way  failing  in  my  duty  as  a  house-wife.  "Home" 
is  a  beautiful  word,  and  home-life  should  be  beauti 
ful.  Any  sacrifice  and  any  concession  a  woman  is 
willing  to  make  to  keep  that  home,  and  to  keep  ugli 
ness  out  of  it,  ought  to  be  well  considered  by  the 
judge  of  her  final  destinies.  I'm  ready  to  do  my 
part,  but  I  don't  know  where  to  begin.  I'm  depressed 
by  a  teasing  sense  of  frustration,  not  quite  tangible 
enough  to  fight,  like  cobwebs  across  your  face.  It's 
not  easy  to  carry  around  the  milk  of  human  kindness 
after  they've  pretty  well  kicked  the  bottom  out  of 


your  can! 


115 


116  THE     PRAIRIH     CHILD 

Torrid  and  tiring  are  these  almost  endless  summer 
days.  But  it's  what  the  grain  needs,  and  who  am 
I  to  look  this  gift-horse  of  heat  in  the  face.  Yet 
there  are  two  things,  I  must  confess,  in  which  the 
prairie  is  sadly  lacking.  One  is  trees;  and  the  other 
is  shade,  the  cool  green  sun-filtering  shade  of  wood 
lands  where  birds  can  sing  and  mossy  little  brooks 
can  babble.  I've  been  longing  all  day  for  just  an 
hour  up  in  an  English  cherry  tree,  with  the  pectoral 
smell  of  the  leaves  against  my  face  and  the  chance 
of  eating  at  least  half  my  own  weight  of  fresh  fruit. 
But  even  in  the  matter  of  its  treelessness,  I'm  told, 
the  prairie  is  reforming.  There  are  men  living  who 
remember  when  there  were  no  trees  west  of  Brandon, 
except  in  the  coulees  and  the  river-bottoms.  Now 
that  fire  no  longer  runs  wild,  however,  the  trees  are 
creeping  in,  mile  by  mile  and  season  by  season.  Al 
ready  the  eastern  line  of  natural  bush  country 
reaches  to  about  ten  miles  from  Regina  two  hundred 
miles  west.  Oxbow  and  Estevan,  Dinky-Dunk  once 
told  me,  had  no  trees  whatever  when  first  settled, 
though  much  of  that  country  now  has  a  comfortable 
array  of  bluffs.  And  forestry,  of  course,  is  giving 
nature  a  friendly  push  along,  in  the  matter.  In  the 
meantime,  we  have  to  accommodate  ourselves  to  the 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  117 

conditions  that  prevail,  just  as  the  birds  of  the  air 
must  do.  Here  the  haughty  crow  of  the  east  is  com 
pelled  to  nest  in  the  low  willows  of  the  coulee  and 
raise  its  young  within  hand-reach  of  mother  earth. 
Like  our  women,  it  can  enjoy  very  little  privacy  of 
family  life.  The  only  thing  that  saves  us  and  the 
crows,  I  suppose,  is  that  the  men-folks  of  this  coun 
try  are  too  preoccupied  with  their  own  ends  to  go 
around  bird-nesting.  They  are  too  busy  to  break 
up  homes,  either  in  willow-tops  or  women's  hearts. 
...  I  ought  to  be  satisfied.  But  I've  been  dogged, 
this  last  day  or  two,  by  a  longing  to  be  scudding 
in  a  single-sticker  off  Orienta  Point  again  or  to 
motor-cruise  once  more  along  the  Sound  in  a  smother 
of  spray. 


Thursday  the  Thirteenth 

DINKY-DUNK  has  been  called  to  Calgary  on  busi 
ness.  It  sounds  simple  enough,  in  these  Unpreten 
tious  Annals  of  an  Unloved  Worm,  but  I  can't  help 
feeling  that  it  marks  a  trivially  significant  divide  in 
the  trend  of  things.  It  depresses  me  more  than  I 
can  explain.  My  depression,  I  imagine,  comes  mostly 
from  the  manner  in  which  Duncan  went.  He  was 
matter-of-fact  enough  about  it  all,  but  I  can't  get 
rid  of  the  impression  that  he  went  with  a  feeling  very 
much  like  relief.  His  manner,  at  any  rate,  was  not 
one  to  invite  cross-examination,  and  he  insisted,  to 
the  end,  on  regarding  his  departure  as  an  every-day 
incident  in  the  life  of  a  preoccupied  rancher.  So  I 
caught  my  cue  from  him,  and  was  as  quiet  about  it 
all  as  he  could  have  wished.  But  under  the  crust 
was  the  volcano.  .  .  . 

The  trouble  with  the  tragedies  of  real  life  is  that 
they  are  never  clear-cut.  It  takes  art  to  weave  a 
selvage  about  them  or  fit  them  into  a  frame.  But 
in  reality  they're  as  ragged  and  nebulous  as  wind- 

118 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  119 

clouds.  The  days  drag  on  into  weeks,  and  the  weeks 
into  months,  and  life  on  the  surface  seems  to  be  run 
ning  on,  the  same  as  before.  There's  the  same  su 
perficial  play  of  all  the  superficial  old  forces,  but  in 
the  depths  are  dangers  and  uglinesses  and  sullen 
bombs  of  emotional  TNT  we  daren't  even  touch! 

Heigho !  I  nearly  forgot  my  sursum-corda  role. 
And  didn't  old  Doctor  Johnson  say  that  peevish 
ness  was  the  vice  of  narrow  minds?  So  here's  where 
we  tighten  up  the  belt  a  bit.  But  we  humans,  who 
come  into  the  world  alone,  and  go  out  of  it  alone, 
are  always  hungering  for  companionship  which  we 
can't  quite  find.  Our  souls  are  islands,  with  a  coral- 
reef  of  reserve  built  up  about  them.  Last  night,  when 
I  was  patching  some  of  Gershom's  undies  for  him, 
I  wickedly  worked  an  arrow-pierced  heart,  in  red 
yarn,  on  one  leg  of  his  B.V.D.'s.  This  morning,  I 
noticed,  his  eye  evaded  mine  and  there  was  marked 
constraint  in  his  manner.  I  even  begin  to  detect  un 
mistakable  signs  of  nervousness  in  him  when  we 
happen  to  be  alone  together.  And  during  his  last 
music  lesson  there  was  a  vibrata  of  emotion  in  his 
voice  which  made  me  think  of  an  April  frog  in  a 
slough-end. 

Even  my  little  Dinkie,  day  before  yesterday,  asked 


120  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

me  if  I'd  mind  not  bathing  him  any  more.  He  ex 
plained  that  he  thought  he  could  manage  very  nicely 
by  himself  now.  It  seemed  trivial  enough,  and  yet, 
in  a  way,  it  was  momentous.  I  am  to  be  denied  the 
luxury  of  tubbing  my  own  child.  I,  who  always  loved 
even  the  smell  of  that  earthy  and  soil-grubbing 
young  body,  who  could  love  it  when  it  wasn't  any 
too  clean  and  could  glory  in  its  musky  and  animal- 
like  odors  as  well  as  the  satin-shine  of  the  light  on 
its  well-soaped  little  ribs,  must  now  stand  aside  be 
fore  the  reservations  of  sex.  It  makes  me  feel  that 
I've  reached  still  another  divide  on  the  continent  of 
motherhood. 

This  afternoon,  when  I  wandered  into  the  study, 
I  observed  Dinkie  stooping  over  a  Chesterfield  pillow 
with  his  right  hand  upraised  in  a  perplexingly  dra 
matic  manner.  He  turned  scarlet  when  he  saw  me 
standing  there  watching  him.  But  the  question  in 
my  eyes  did  not  escape  him. 

"I  was  pr'tendin'  to  be  King  Arthur  when  he 
found  out  Guinevere  was  in  love  with  Launcelot," 
he  rather  lamely  explained  as  he  walked  away  to  the 
window  and  stood  staring  out  over  the  prairie.  But 
for  the  life  of  me  I  can't  understand  what  should 
have  turned  his  thoughts  into  that  particular  chan- 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

nel  of  romance.  Those  are  matters  with  which  the 
young  and  the  innocent  should  have  nothing  to  do. 
They  are  matters,  in  fact,  which  it  behooves  even 
the  old  and  the  wary  to  eschew. 


Sunday  the  Sixteenth 

IT  seems  strange,  in  such  golden  summer  weather, 
that  every  man  and  woman  and  child  on  this  sun 
bathed  foot-stool  of  God  shouldn't  be  sanely  and 
supremely  happy.  .  .  .  My  husband,  I  am  glad  to 
say,  is  once  more  back  in  his  home.  And  I  have 
been  realizing,  the  last  few  days,  that  home  is  an 
empty  and  foolish  place  without  its  man  about.  It's 
a  ship  without  a  captain,  a  clan  without  a  chief. 
Yet  I  found  it  both  depressing  and  humbling  to  be 
brought  once  more  face  to  face  with  that  particular 
fact. 

Dinky-Dunk,  on  the  other  hand,  has  come  back 
with  both  an  odd  sense  of  elation  and  an  odd  sense 
of  estrangement.  He  has  taken  on  a  vague  some 
thing  which  I  find  it  impossible  to  define.  He  is 
blither  and  at  the  same  time  he  is  more  solemnly  ab 
stracted.  And  he  protests  that  his  journey  was  a 
success. 

"I'm  going  to  ride  two  horses,  from  now  on,"  he 
announced  to  me  this  morning.  "I've  got  my  chance 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  123 

and  I'm  going  to  grab  it.  I've  swapped  my  Buck- 
horn  lots  for  some  inside  Calgary  stuff  and  I'm 
lumping  everything  that's  left  of  my  Coast  deal  for 
a  third-interest  in  those  Barcona  coal-fields.  There's 
a  quarter  of  a  million  waiting  there  for  the  people 
with  money  enough  to  swing  it.  And  I'm  going  to 
edge  in  while  it's  still  open." 

"But  is  it  possible  to  ride  two  horses?"  I  asked, 
waywardly  depressed  by  all  this  new-found  optimism. 

"It's  got  to  be  possible,  until  we  find  out  which 
horse  is  the  better  traveler,"  announced  Dinky-Dunk. 
Then  he  added,  without  caring  to  meet  my  eye :  "And 
I  can't  say  I  see  much  promise  of  action  out  of  this 
particular  end  of  the  team." 

I  must  have  flamed  red,  at  that  speech,  for  I 
thought  at  the  moment  he  was  referring  to  me.  It 
was  only  after  I'd  turned  the  thing  over  in  my  mind, 
as  I  helped  Struthers  put  together  our  new  butter- 
worker,  that  I  saw  he  really  referred  to  Casa 
Grande.  But  my  husband  knows  I  will  never  part 
with  this  ranch.  He  will  never  be  so  foolish  as  to 
ask  me  to  do  that.  Yet  one  thing  is  plain.  His 
heart  is  no  longer  here.  He  will  stick  to  this  prairie 
farm  of  ours  only  for  what  he  can  get  out  of  it. 

Dinkie  warmed  the  cockles  of  my  heart  by  telling 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

me  this  afternoon  when  we  were  out  salting  the 
horses  that  he  never  wanted  to  go  away  from  Casa 
Grande  and  his  mummy.  The  child,  I  imagine,  had 
overheard  some  of  this  morning's  talk.  He  put  his 
arm  around  my  knees  and  hugged  me  tight.  And  I 
could  see  the  tawny  look  come  into  his  hazel  eyes 
speckled  with  brown.  My  Dinkie  is  a  prairie  child. 
His  soul  is  not  a  cramped  little  soul,  but  has  depth 
and  wideness  and  undiscerned  mysteries. 


Sunday  the  Thirtieth 

Two  weeks  have  slipped  by.  Two  weeks  have 
gone,  and  left  no  record  of  their  going.  But  a 
prairie  home  is  a  terribly  busy  one,  at  times,  and 
it's  idleness  that  leads  to  the  ink-pot.  I'm  still  try 
ing  to  make  the  best  of  a  none  too  promising  situa 
tion,  and  I'll  thole  through,  as  Whinstane  Sandy 
puts  it.  After  breakfast  this  morning,  in  fact,  when 
Pauline  Augusta  was  swept  by  one  of  those  little 
gales  of  lonesomeness  to  which  children  and  women 
are  so  mysteriously  subjected,  she  climbed  up  into 
my  lap  and  I  rocked  her  on  my  shoulder  as  I  might 
have  rocked  a  baby.  Dinky-Dunk  wandered  in  and 
inspected  that  performance  with  a  slightly  satiric 
eye.  So,  resenting  his  expression,  I  promptly  be 
gan  to  sing: 

"Bye-bye,  Baby  Bunting, 
Daddy's  gone  a-hunting, 
To  gather  up  a  pile  of  tin 
To  wrap  the  Baby  Bunting  in !" 

Dinky-Dunk,  when  the  significance  of  this  lilted 
125 


126  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

flippancy  of  mine  had  sunk  home,  regarded  me  with 
a  narrowed  and  none  too  friendly  eye. 

"Feeling  a  bit  larkier  than  usual  this  morning, 
aren't  you?"  he  inquired  with  what  was  merely  a 
pretense  at  carelessness. 

It  was  merely  a  pretense,  I  know,  because  we'd 
been  over  the  old  ground  the  night  before,  and  the 
excursion  hadn't  added  greatly  to  the  happiness  of 
either  of  us.  Duncan,  in  fact,  had  rather  horrified 
me  by  actually  asking  if  I  thought  there  was  a 
chance  of  his  borrowing  eleven  thousand  dollars  from 
Peter  Ketley. 

"We  can't  all  trade  on  that  man's  generosity !"  I 
cried,  without  giving  much  thought  to  the  manner 
in  which  I  was  expressing  myself. 

"Oh,  that's  the  way  you  feel  about  it!"  retorted 
my  husband.  And  I  could  see  his  face  harden  into 
Scotch  granite.  I  could  also  see  the  look  of  per 
plexity  in  my  small  son's  eyes  as  he  stood  studying 
his  father. 

"Is  there  anything  abnormal  in  my  feeling  the 
way  I  do?"  I  parried,  resenting  the  beetling  brow  of 
the  Dour  Man. 

"Not  if  you  regard  him  as  your  personal  and 
particular  fairy  god-father,"  retorted  my  husband. 

"I've  no  more  reason  for  regarding  him  as  that,'* 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  127 

I  said  as  calmly  as  I  could,  "than  I  have  for  re 
garding  him  as  a  professional  money-lender." 

Duncan  must  have  seen  from  my  face  that  it  would 
be  dangerous  to  go  much  further.  So  he  merely 
shrugged  a  flippant  shoulder. 

"They  tell  me  he's  got  more  money  than  he  knows 
what  to  do  with,"  he  said  with  a  heavy  jocularity 
which  couldn't  quite  rise. 

"Then  lightening  his  burdens  is  a  form  of  charity 
we  can  scarcely  afford  to  indulge  in,"  I  none  too 
graciously  remarked.  And  I  saw  my  husband's  face 
harden  again. 

"Well,  I've  got  to  have  ready  money  and  I've  got 
to  have  it  before  the  year's  out,"  was  his  retort.  Ho 
told  me,  when  the  air  had  cleared  a  little,  that  he'd 
have  to  open  an  office  in  Calgary  as  soon  as  harvest 
ing  was  over.  There  was  already  too  much  at  stake 
to  take  chances.  Then  he  asked  me  if  there  were 
any  circumstances  under  which  I'd  be  willing  to  sell 
Casa  Grande.  And  I  told  him,  quite  promptly  and 
quite  definitely,  that  there  was  none. 

"Then  how  about  the  old  Harris  Ranch?"  he 
finally  inquired. 

"But  why  should  we  sell  that?"  I  asked.  Alabama 
Ranch,  I  knew,  was  in  my  name,  and  I  had  always 
regarded  it  as  a  sort  of  nest-egg  for  the  children. 


128  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

It  was  something  put  by  for  a  rainy  day,  something 
to  fall  back  on,  if  ill-luck  ever  overtook  us  again. 

"Because  I  can  double  and  treble  every  dollar  we 
get  out  of  it,  inside  of  a  year,"  averred  Dinky-Dunk. 

"But  how  am  I  to  know  that?"  I  contended,  hat 
ing  to  seem  hard  and  selfish  and  narrow  in  the  teeth 
of  an  ambitious  man's  enterprise. 

"You'd  have  to  take  my  word  for  it,"  retorted 
my  husband. 

"But  we've  more  than  ourselves  to  consider,"  I 
contended,  knowing  he'd  merely  scoff  at  that  harping 
on  the  old  string  of  the  children. 

"That's  why  I  intend  to  get  out  of  this  rut !"  he 
cried  with  unexpected  bitterness.  And  a  few  minutes 
later  he  made  the  suggestion  that  he'd  deed  Casa 
Grande  entirely  over  to  me  if  I'd  consent  to  the  sale 
of  Alabama  Ranch  and  give  him  a  chance  to  swing 
the  bigger  plans  he  intended  to  swing. 

The  suggestion  rather  took  my  breath  away.  My 
rustic  soul,  I  suppose,  is  stupidly  averse  to  change. 
But  I  realize  that  when  you  travel  in  double-harness 
you  can't  forever  pull  back  on  your  team-mate.  So 
I've  asked  Dinky-Dunk  to  give  me  a  few  days  to 
think  the  thing  over. 


Wednesday  the  Second 

CASA  GRANDE  has  had  an  invasion  of  visitors.  It 
was  precious  old  Percy  and  his  Olga  who  blew  in 
on  us,  after  being  swallowed  up  by  the  Big  Silence 
for  almost  four  long  years.  They  came  without 
warning,  which  is  the  free  and  easy  way  of  the  west 
erner,  appearing  in  a  mud-splattered  and  dust-cov 
ered  Ford  that  had  carried  them  blithely  over  two 
hundred  and  thirty  miles  of  prairie  trails.  And  with 
them  they  brought  a  quartet  of  rampageous  young 
buckaroos  who  promptly  turned  our  sedate  home 
stead  into  a  rodeo. 

Percy  himself  is  browner  and  stouter  and  more 
rubicund  than  I  might  have  expected,  with  just  a 
sprinkling  of  gray  under  his  lop-sided  Stetson  to 
announce  that  Time  hasn't  been  standing  still  for 
any  of  us.  But  one  would  never  have  taken  him  for 
an  ex-lunger.  And  there  is  a  wholesomeness  about 
the  man,  for  all  his  quietness,  which  draws  one  to 
him.  Olga  herself  still  again  impressed  me  as  a 

129 


130  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Zorn  etching  come  to  life,  as  a  Norse  myth  in  pet 
ticoats,  with  the  same  old  largeness  of  limb  and  the 
same  old  suggestion  of  sky-line  vastnesses  about  her. 
She  still  looks  as  though  the  Lord  had  made  her 
when  the  world  was  young  and  the  women  of  Homer 
did  their  spinning  in  the  sunlight.  Some  earlier 
touch  of  morning  freshness  is  gone  from  her,  it's 
true,  for  you  can't  move  about  with  four  little  tod 
dlers  in  your  wake  and  still  suggest  the  budding 
vine.  But  that  morning  freshness  has  been  sup 
planted  by  a  full  and  mellow  noonday  contentedness 
which  is  not  without  its  placid  appeal.  To  her  hus 
band,  at  any  rate,  she  seems  mysteriously  perfect. 
He  can  still  sit  and  stare  at  her  with  a  startlingly 
uxorious  eye.  And  she,  in  turn,  bathes  him  in  that 
pale  lunar  stare  of  meditative  approval  which  says 
plainer  than  words  just  how  much  her  "man"  means 
to  her. 

Percy  and  his  family  stayed  overnight  with  us 
and  hit  the  trail  again  yesterday  morning.  An  old 
friend  of  Percy's  from  Brasenose  has  taken  a  parish 
some  forty  odd  miles  south  of  Buckhorn — a  parish, 
by  the  way,  which  ought  to  shake  a  little  of  the 
Oxford  dreaminess  out  of  his  system — and  Olga  and 
her  husband  are  "packing"  their  newly-arrived  Tod- 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  131 

dler  Number  Four  down  to  the  new  curate  to  have 
him  christened, 

We  were  all  a  bit  shy  and  constrained,  during  our 
first  hour  together  but  this  soon  wore  away.  It 
wasn't  long  before  Olga's  offspring  and  mine  were 
fraternizing  together,  over-running  the  bathroom 
tub  and  emptying  our  water-tank,  and  making  a 
concerted  attack  on  one  of  Dinky-Dunk's  self-bind 
ers,  which  would  have  been  dismantled  in  short  order, 
if  Percy  hadn't  gone  out  to  investigate  the  cause  of 
the  sudden  quiet. 

"My  boy  loves  everything  with  wheels,"  explained 
the  proud  Olga,  in  extenuation  of  her  Junior's  oil- 
blackened  fingers. 

That  brought  me  up  short,  for  I  was  on  the  point 
of  making  the  same  statement  about  my  Dinkie. 
After  thinking  it  over,  in  fact,  I  realized  that  every 
normal  boy  loves  everything  with  wheels.  And  it 
began  to  dawn  on  me  that  there  was  nothing  so  ex 
traordinary,  after  all,  in  my  son's  fondness  for 
machinery.  I  began  to  see  that  he  was  merely  one 
of  a  very  wide-spread  clan,  when,  an  hour  later, 
the  entire  excited  six  united  in  playing  Indian  about 
the  haystacks,  and  kept  it  up  until  even  the  docile 
Pauline  Augusta  was  driven  to  revolt  against  so 


132  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

persistently  being  the  Pale-face  captive.  She  an 
nounced  that  she  was  tired  of  being  scalped.  So, 
for  variety's  sake,  the  boys  turned  to  riding  and 
roping  and  hog-tying  one  another  like  the  true  little 
westerners  they  were,  and  many  an  imaginary  brand 
was  planted  on  many  a  bleating  set  of  ribs. 

But  now  they  are  gone,  and  I've  been  thinking  a 
great  deal  about  Olga.  I  fancy  I  have  even  been 
envying  her  a  little.  She's  of  that  annealing  softness 
which  can  rivet  and  hold  a  family  together.  I've 
even  been  trying  to  solace  myself  with  the  claim 
that  she's  a  trifle  ox-like  in  her  make-up.  But  that 
is  not  being  just  to  Olga.  She  makes  a  perfect 
wife.  She  is  as  tranquil-minded  as  summer  moon 
light  on  a  convent-roof.  She  is  as  soft-spoken  as  a 
wind-harp  swinging  in  an  abbey  door.  She  sur 
renders  to  the  will  of  her  husband  and  neither  frets 
nor  questions  nor  walks  with  discontent.  I  suppose 
she  has  a  will  of  her  own,  packed  somewhere  away 
in  that  benignant  big  body  of  hers,  but  she  never 
obtrudes  it.  She  placidly  awaits  her  time,  as  the 
bosom  of  the  prairie  awaits  its  harvesting.  And 
I've  been  wondering  if  that  really  isn't  the  best  type 
of  woman  for  married  life,  the  autumnally  contented 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  133 

and  pensively  quiet  woman  who  can  remain  unruf 
fled  by  man  and  his  meanderings. 

I  wasn't  built  according  to  that  plan,  and  I  sup 
pose  I've  had  to  pay  for  it.  I've  just  about  con 
cluded,  in  fact,  that  I  would  have  been  a  hard  nut 
for  any  man  to  crack.  I've  never  been  conspicuous 
for  my  efforts  at  self-obliteration.  I've  a  temper 
that's  as  brittle  as  a  squirrel  bone.  I'm  too  febrile 
and  flightly,  too  chameleon-mooded  and  critical. 
The  modern  wife  should  be  always  a  conservative. 
She  should  hold  back  her  husband's  impulses  of  nerv 
ous  expenditure,  conserving  his  tranquil-mindedness 
about  the  same  as  cotton-waste  in  a  journal-box  con 
serves  oil.  Heaven  knows  I  started  with  theories 
enough — but  I  must  be  a  good  deal  like  old  Schramm, 
that  teacher  of  Heine's  who  was  so  busy  inditing 
a  study  of  Universal  Peace  that  his  boys  had  all  the 
chance  they  could  wish  for  pummeling  one  another. 
But  I've  been  thinking,  Reuben.  And  I'm  going  to 
see  if  I  can't  save  what's  left  of  the  ship.  I'm  no 
Renaissance  cherub  on  a  cloudlet,  but  I'm  going  to 
knuckle  down  and  see  if  I  can't  jibe  along  a  little 
better  with  my  old  Dinky-Dunk.  I've  decided  to 
back  off  and  give  him  his  chance.  If  he's  set  on 
selling  Alabama  Ranch,  on  the  terms  he's  mentioned, 


134  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

I'm  not  going  to  object.  He's  determined  to  make 
money,  to  advance.  And  I  don't  want  to  see  him 
accusing  me  of  lying  down  in  the  shafts !  .  .  .  What 
is  more,  I'm  going  out  in  the  fields,  when  the  push 
is  on,  to  help  stook  the  wheat.  That  may  wear  me 
down  and  make  me  a  little  more  like  Olga. 


Thursday  the  Tenth 

IT'S  difficult  to  be  a  woman,  as  the  over-sensitive 
Jean  Christophe  once  remarked.  Men  are  without 
those  confounding  emotions  which  women  seem  to  be 
both  cursed  with  and  blessed  with.  When  I  an 
nounced  to  Dinky-Dunk  my  willingness  to  part  with 
Alabama  Ranch,  he  took  it  quite  as  a  matter  of 
course.  He  betrayed  no  tendency  to  praise  me  for 
my  sacrifices,  for  my  willingness  to  surrender  to 
strangers  the  land  which  had  once  been  our  home, 
the  acres  on  which  we'd  once  been  happy  and  heavy- 
hearted.  He  merely  remarked  that  under  the  cir 
cumstances  it  seemed  the  most  sensible  thing  to  do. 
There's  a  one-horse  lawyer  in  Buckhorn  who  has 
been  asking  about  the  Harris  Ranch  and  Dinky-Dunk 
says  he  suspects  this  inquiring  one  has  a  client  up 
his  sleeve. 

What  I  had  looked  forward  to  as  a  talk  which 
might  possibly  beat  down  a  few  of  the  barriers  of 
reserve  between  us  proved  a  bit  of  a  disappointment. 
My  husband  refused  to  accept  me  as  a  heroine.  And 

135 


136  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

on  his  way  out,  as  ill-luck  would  have  it,  he  stopped 
to  observe  Pauline  Augusta  struggling  over  a  letter 
to  her  "Uncle  Peter."  It  was  a  maiden  effort  along 
that  line  and  she  was  dictating  her  messages  to 
Dinkie,  who,  in  turn,  was  laboriously  and  carefully 
inscribing  them  on  my  writing-pad,  with  a  nose  and 
a  sympathetically  working  tongue  not  more  than  ten 
inches  away  from  the  paper.  Pauline  Augusta,  in 
fact,  had  just  proclaimed  to  her  amanuensis  that 
"we  had  a  geese  for  dinner  to-day"  when  her  father 
stopped  to  size  up  the  situation. 

"To  whom  are  you  describing  the  home  circle?" 
questioned  Pauline  Augusta's  parent,  with  an  into 
nation  that  didn't  escape  me. 

"It's  a  letter  to  Uncle  Peter,"  explained  Dinkie's 
little  sister.  And  I  could  see  Duncan's  face  harden. 

"It's  funny  my  whole  family  should  fall  for  that 
damned  Quaker!"  were  the  words  he  flung  over  his 
shoulder  at  me  as  he  walked  out  of  the  room. 


Tuesday  the  Fifth 

SCHOOL  has  started  again.  And  it's  a  solemn 
business,  this  matter  of  planting  wisdom  in  little 
prairie  heads.  Dinky-Dunk,  who  has  been  up  to  his 
ears  in  haying  and  is  now  watching  his  grain  with 
a  nervous  eye,  remarked  that  our  offspring  would 
be  once  more  mingling  with  Mennonites  and  Swedes 
and  Galicians  and  Ukrainians.  I  resented  that 
speech,  though  I  said  nothing  in  reply  to  it.  But  I 
decided  to  investigate  Gershom's  school. 

So  yesterday  afternoon  I  drove  over  in  the  car. 
I  had  a  blow-out  on  the  way,  a  blow-out  which  I  had 
to  patch  up  with  my  own  hands,  so  I  arrived  too  late 
to  inspect  Gershom  conducting  his  classes.  It  was 
almost  four,  in  fact,  before  I  got  there,  so  I  pulled 
up  beside  the  school-gate  and  sat  waiting  for  the 
children  to  come  out.  And  as  I  sat  there  in  the  car- 
seat,  under  a  sky  of  unimaginable  blue,  with  the 
prairie  wind  whipping  my  face,  I  couldn't  help  study 
ing  that  bald  little  temple  of  learning  which  stood 
out  so  clear-cut  in  the  sharp  northern  sunlight.  It 

137 


138 

was  a  plain  little  frame  building  set  in  one  corner 
of  a  rancher's  half-section,  an  acre  of  land  marked 
off  by  a  wire  fence  where  the  two  trails  crossed,  the 
two  long  trails  that  melted  away  in  the  interminable 
distance.  It  seemed  a  lonely  little  house  of  scholar 
ship,  with  its  playground  worn  so  bare  that  even 
two  months  of  idleness  had  given  scant  harborage 
for  the  seeds  that  wind  and  bird  must  have  brought 
there.  But  as  I  stared  at  it  it  seemed  to  take  on  a 
dignity  all  Its  own,  the  dignity  of  a  fixed  and  far- 
off  purpose.  It  was  the  nest  of  a  nation's  greatness. 
It  was  the  outpost  of  civilization.  It  was  the  ad 
vance-guard  of  pioneering  man,  driving  the  wilder 
ness  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  North.  It  was  life 
preparing  wistfully  for  the  future. 

From  it  I  heard  a  sudden  shrill  chorus  of  voices 
and  the  clatter  of  feet,  and  I  knew  that  the  day's 
work  was  over.  I  saw  the  children  emerge,  like  bees 
out  of  a  beehive,  and  loneliness  no  longer  reigned 
over  that  bald  yard  in  the  betraying  northern  sun 
light.  Yet  they  were  not  riotous,  those  children  con 
fronting  the  wine-like  air  of  the  open.  They  were 
more  subdued  than  I  had  looked  for,  since  I  could 
only  too  easily  remember  one  of  my  earlier  calls 
for  Dinkie  at  noon,  when  I  found  the  entire  class 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  139 

turned  out  and  riding  a  rancher's  pig,  a  heavy  brood- 
sow  that  had  in  some  luckless  moment  Avandcred  into 
the  school-yard  and  had  been  chased  and  raced  until 
it  was  too  weary  to  resent  a  young  barbarian  mount 
ing  its  broad  back  and  riding  thereon,  to  the  shouts 
of  the  other  boys  and  the  shrill  cries  of  the  girls. 
But  now,  from  my  car-seat,  I  could  see  Gershom 
surrounded  by  a  multi-colored  group  of  little  figures, 
as  he  stopped  to  fix  a  strap-buckle  on  the  school-bag 
of  one  of  his  pupils.  And  as  he  stood  there  in  the 
slanting  afternoon  sunlight  surrounded  by  his 
charges  he  suddenly  made  me  think  of  the  tall  old 
priest  in  Sorolla's  Triste  Herencia  surrounded  by  his 
waifs.  I  caught  the  echo  of  something  benignant 
and  Lincoln-like  from  that  raw-boned  figure  in  the 
big-lensed  eye-glasses  and  the  clothes  that  didn't 
quite  fit  him.  And  my  respect  for  Gershom  went 
up  like  a  Chinook-fanned  thermometer.  He  took 
those  children  of  his  seriously.  He  liked  them.  He 
was  trying  to  give  them  the  best  that  was  in  him. 
And  that  solemn  purpose  saved  him,  redeemed  him, 
ennobled  his  baldness  just  as  it  ennobled  the  bald 
ness  of  the  four-square  little  frame  building  behind 
him.  I  don't  know  why  it  was,  but  for  some  reason 
or  other  that  picture  of  the  northern  prairie  and  the 


140  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

gaunt  school-teacher  surrounded  by  his  pupils  in  the 
thinning  afternoon  sunlight  became  memorable  to  me. 
It  photographed  itself  on  my  mind,  not  sharply,  but 
softened  with  a  fringing  prism  of  feeling,  like  a  pic 
ture  taken  with  what  camera-men  call  a  "soft-focus." 
It  touched  my  heart,  in  some  way,  and  threatened 
to  bring  a  choke  up  into  my  foolish  old  throat. 

It  was  Pauline  Augusta  who  saw  me  first.  She 
came  toward  the  car  with  her  strapped  school- 
books  and  her  lunch-box  in  her  hand  and  a  prim  little 
smile  on  her  slightly  freckled  face.  She  impressed 
me  as  a  startingly  shabby  figure,  in  the  old  seal 
skin  coat  which  I  had  made  over  for  her,  worn  clean 
to  the  hide  along  the  front,  for  even  those  early 
autumn  days  found  a  chill  in  the  air  when  the  sun 
began  to  get  low.  She  had  just  climbed  in  beside 
me  when  I  caught  sight  of  Dinkie.  I  saw  him  come 
down  the  school-steps,  stuffing  something  into  the 
pocket  of  his  reef er- j  acket  as  he  came.  He  looked 
startlingly  tall,  for  a  boy  of  his  years.  He  seemed 
deep  in  thought.  There  was,  indeed,  an  air  of  re 
moteness  about  him  which  for  a  moment  rather 
startled  me,  an  air  of  belonging,  not  to  me,  but  to 
the  world  into  which  he  was  peering  with  such  ardent 
young  eyes.  Then  he  caught  sight  of  me,  and  at 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  141 

the  same  moment  his  face  both  lightened  and  bright 
ened.  He  came  toward  the  car  quietly,  none  the  less, 
and  with  that  slightly  sidewise  twist  of  the  body 
which  overtakes  him  in  his  occasional  moments  of 
embarrassment,  for  it  was  plain  that  he  stood 
averse  to  any  undue  display  of  emotion  before  his 
playmates.  He  merely  said,  "Hello,  Mummy"  and 
smiJed  awkwardly.  But  after  he  had  climbed  up  into 
the  car  and  wormed  down  between  Pauline  Augusta 
and  me,  and  after  I  had  tucked  the  old  bear-robe 
about  them  and  called  out  to  Gershom  that  I'd  carry 
my  kiddies  home,  I  could  feel  Dinkie's  arm  push  shyly 
in  behind  my  back  and  work  its  way  as  far  around 
my  waist  as  it  was  able  to  reach.  He  didn't  speak. 
But  his  solemn  little  face  gazed  up  at  me,  with  its 
habitual  hungry  look,  and  I  could  see  the  hazel  specks 
in  the  brown  iris  of  the  upturned  eye  as  the  arm 
tightened  its  hold  on  me.  It  made  me  ridiculously 
happy.  For  I  knew  that  my  boy  loved  me.  And  I 
love  him.  I  love  him  so  much  that  it  brings  a  taper 
ing  spear-head  of  pain  into  my  heart,  and  at  the  very 
moment  I'm  so  happy  I  feel  a  tear  just  under  the 
surface. 


Sunday  the  Tenth 

I  HAVE  been  reading  Peter's  latest  letter  to  Dinkie, 
reading  it  for  the  second  time.  It  is  not  so  frolicsome 
as  many  of  its  fellows,  but  it  impresses  me  as  typical 
of  its  sender. 


"I've  to-day  told  fourteen  cents'  worth  of  postage- 
stamps  to  carry  out  to  you,  dear  Dinkie,  a  copy  of 
my  own  Tales  from  Homer,  which  may  be  muddy 
with  a  few  big  words  but  which  the  next  year  or  two 
will  surely  see  tramped  down  into  easier  going.  You 
may  not  like  it  now,  but  later  on,  I  know,  you  will 
like  it  better.  For  it  tells  of  heroes  and  battles  and 
travels  which  only  a  boy  can  really  understand.  It 
tells  of  the  wanderings  and  adventures  of  strong  and 
simple-hearted  men,  men  who  are  as  scarce,  nowa 
days,  as  the  shining  helmets  they  used  to  wear.  It 
tells  of  women  superb  and  simple  and  lovely  as  god 
desses,  such  as  your  own  prairie  might  give  birth  to, 
such  as  your  own  mother  must  always  seem  to  us.  It 
tells  of  flashing  temples  and  cities  of  marble  over 
looking  singing  seas  of  sapphire,  of  stately  ships 
venturing  over  dark  waters  and  landing  on  unknown 
islands,  of  siege  and  sword-fights  and  caves  and 
giants  and  sea-goddesses  and  magic  songs,  and  all 

142 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  143 

that  sunnier  and  simpler  life  which  the  world,  as  a 
prosaic  old  grown-up,  has  left  behind  .   .   . 

"But  I'm  wrong  in  this,  perhaps,  for  out  in  the 
land  where  you  live  there  is  still  largeness  and  the 
gold-green  ache  of  wonder  beyond  every  sky-line. 
And  I  can't  help  envying  you,  Dinkie,  for  being  a 
part  of  that  world  which  is  so  much  more  heroic  than 
mine.  I  live  where  a  very  shabby  line  of  horse-cars 
used  to  run;  and  you  live  where  the  buffaloes  used 
to  run.  I  hear  the  rattle  of  the  ash-cans  in  the  morn 
ing;  and  you  hear  the  song  of  the  wind  playing  on 
the  harp  of  summer.  I  pay  five  hundred  dollars  a 
year  to  wander  about  a  smoky  club  no  bigger  than 
your  corral ;  you  wander  about  a  Big  Outdoors  that 
rambles  off  up  to  the  Arctic  Circle  itself.  And  you 
open  a  window  at  night  and  see  the  Aurora  Borealis 
in  all  its  beauty;  and  I  open  mine  and  observe  an 
electric  roof-sign  announcing  that  Somebody's  Tonic 
will  take  away  my  tired  feeling.  You  put  up  your 
blind  and  see  God's  footstool  bright  with  dew  and 
dizzy  with  distance;  I  put  up  mine  and  overlook  a 
wall  of  brick  and  mortar  with  one  window  wherein  a 
fat  man  shaves  himself.  And  you  can  go  out  in  the 
morning  and  pick  yellow  crowfoot  and  range  lilies; 
and  all  we  can  pick  about  this  place  of  ours  are  milk- 
bottles  and  morning-papers  packed  full  of  murder 
and  theft  and  tax-notices  !" 

Much  of  that  letter,  I  know,  was  over  Dinkie's 
head.  But  it  carried  a  message  or  two  to  Dinkie's 
mother  which  in  some  way  threw  her  heart  into  high. 
It  was  different  from  the  letter  that  came  the  week 


144  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

before,  the  one  arriving  two  days  ahead  of  Kingsley's 
Water  Babies  with  six  lines  of  Hagedorn  inscribed  on 
its  fly-leaf: 

"And  here  you  are  to  live,  and  help  us  live. 

Bend  close  and  listen,  bird  with  folded  wings. 

Here  is  life's  secret :    Keep  the  upward  glance ; 

Remember  Aries  is  your  relative, 

The  Moon's  your  uncle,  and  those  twinkling  things 

Your  sisters  and  your  cousins  and  your  aunts !" 

This  letter  seemed  like  the  Peter  Ketley  we  knew 
best,  the  sad-eyed  Peter  with  the  feather  of  courage 
in  his  cap,  the  Peter  who  could  caper  and  make  you 
forget  that  his  heart  had  ever  been  heavy.  For  he 
wrote : 


"This  time,  Dinkie-Boy,  I'm  going  to  tell  you 
about  the  sea.  For  the  water-tank,  as  I  remember  it, 
is  the  biggest  sea  you  have  at  Casa  Grande — unless 
you  count  the  mud  when  winter  breaks  up!  And 
your  prairie,  with  its  long  waves  of  green,  is,  I  sup 
pose,  really  a  sea  that  has  gone  to  sleep.  But  I  mean 
the  truly  honest-to-goodness  sea  which  has  tides  and 
baby-whales  and  steamers  and  cramps  and  sea-ser 
pents  in  it.  You  saw  it  once  at  Santa  Monica,  I 
know,  though  you  may  have  been  too  small  to  remem 
ber.  But  yesterday,  I  motored  to  a  place  called 
Atlantic  City  where  they  sell  picture  post-cards  and 
push  you  in  a  wheeled  chair  and  let  you  sit  on  the 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  145 

sand  and  watch  the  Water  Babies,  whom  the  police 
men  send  to  jail  if  they  so  much  as  walk  along  the 
beach  without  their  stockings  on.  These  Water 
Babies  were  not  in  a  bottle — like  the  ones  you'll  read 
about  in  the  book — but  I  think  there  was  a  bottle  or 
two  in  some  of  them,  from  the  way  they  acted.  But 
one  of  them  was  in  a  pickle,  for  Father  Neptune 
caught  her  in  his  under-tow — which  you  must  not 
mix  up  with  his  under-toe,  something  with  which  only 
the  mermaids  are  familiar — and  a  life-guard  had  to 
swim  out  and  bring  her  in.  And  a  few  minutes  after 
that  I  saw  a  real  beach-comber.  I  had  read  about 
them  in  the  South  Sea  Islands,  but  had  never  seen  one 
before.  This  one  sat  under  a  striped  parasol,  with  a 
mirror  between  her  knees,  and  combed  and  combed 
her  hair  until  it  was  quite  dry  again.  I  was  disap 
pointed  in  her  knees,  because  I  was  hoping,  at  first, 
she  wouldn't  have  any,  but  would  be  a  mermaid  who 
had  come  up  on  the  sand  to  sun  herself  and  would 
have  a  long  and  tapering  tail  covered  with  scales  like 
a  tarpon's.  But  all  she  had  was  beach-shoes  tied 
with  silk  ribbons,  and  I  preferred  watching  the 
water.  For  when  I  watch  the  ocean  I  always  feel  like 
Mr.  Hood  and  wish  I  was  at  least  three  small  boys,  so 
that  I  could  pull  off  my  three  pairs  of  shoes  and 
stockings  and  go  paddling  up  to  my  six  bare  knees 
and  let  the  rollers  slap  against  my  three  startled  little 
tummies  and  have  thirty  toes  to  step  on  the  squids 
and  star-fish  with.  And  when  I  went  back  to  the 
board-walk  and  watched  all  the  gulls  (I  don't  think 
I  ever  saw  so  many  of  'em  in  one  place  at  once)  I 
couldn't  help  thinking  it  was  too  bad  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  didn't  wait  for  three  centuries  and  land  at  a 
bright  and  lively  place  like  this,  since  it  would  have 


146  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

made  them  so  much  jollier  and  fizzier.  They'd  prob 
ably  have  turned  the  Mayflower  into  a  diving-float 
and  we'd  never  have  had  any  Blue  Laws  to  break  and 
that  curious  thing  known  as  The  New  England  Con 
science  to  keep  us  from  being  as  happy  as  we  feel  we 
ought  to  be." 


Sunday  the  Twenty-Fourth 

HARVEST  is  on  us,  and  Casa  Grande  hums  like  a 
beehive.  There  are  three  extra  "hands"  to  feed,  and 
Whinnie  is  going  about  with  a  moody  eye  because 
Struthers  is  directing  more  attention  than  necessary 
toward  one  of  the  smooth-spoken  cutthroats  now 
nesting  in  our  bunk-house.  His  name  is  Cuba  Sebeck 
and  in  times  of  peace  he  professes  to  be  a  horse- 
wrangler.  Struthers,  intent  on  showing  Whinnie 
that  he  is  not  the  only  man  in  her  world,  is  placidly 
but  patiently  showering  the  lanky  Cuba  with  a  bar 
rage  of  her  fluffiest  pastries.  She  has  also  given  her 
hair  an  extra  strong  wash  of  sage-tea,  which  is 
Struthers'  pet  and  particular  way  of  putting  on  war 
paint.  Whinnie,  I  notice,  shuts  himself  up  after 
supper  with  that  copy  of  Burns'  poems  we  gave  him 
last  Christmas,  morosely  exiling  himself  from  all  the 
laughing  and  gaming  and  pow-wowing  which  takes 
place  in  the  long  cool  twilights,  just  outside  the  bunk- 
house.  Cuba  undertook  to  serenade  the  dour  one  by 
donning  certain  portions  of  Struthers'  apparel  and 

147 


148  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

playing  my  old  banjo  under  his  window.  Whinnie 
quietly  retaliated  by  emptying  his  bath-water  on  the 
musician's  head — and  the  language  was  indescribable. 
I  have  been  forced  to  speak  to  Dinky-Dunk,  in  fact, 
about  the  men's  profanity  before  my  children.  It  is 
something  I  will  not  endure.  My  husband,  on  the 
other  hand,  refuses  to  take  the  matter  very  seriously. 
But  I  have  been  keeping  a  close  eye  over  my  kiddies — • 
and  woe  betide  the  horse-wrangler  who  uses  unseemly 
language  within  their  hearing.  So  far  they  seem  to 
have  gone  through  it  unscathed,  about  the  same  as 
a  child  can  go  through  the  indecorous  moments  of 
The  Arabian  Nights,  which  stands  profoundly  wicked 
to  only  Arabs  and  old  gentlemen. 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-Eighth 

SUMMER  is  slipping  away.  The  days  are  shorten 
ing  and  there  have  been  light  frosts  at  night,  but  not 
enough  to  hurt  Dinky-Dunk's  late  oats,  which  he  has 
been  watching  with  a  worried  eye.  There  is  a  saber- 
blade  edge  to  the  evening  air  now  and  we  have  been 
having  some  glorious  dispkys  of  Northern  Lights. 
I  can't  help  feeling  that  these  Merry  Dancers  of  the 
Pole,  as  some  one  has  called  them,  make  up  for  what 
the  prairie  may  lack  in  diversity.  Dusk  by  dusk  they 
drown  our  world  in  color,  they  smother  our  skies  in 
glory.  They  are  terrifying,  sometimes,  to  the  tender 
foot,  giving  him  the  feeling  that  his  world  is  on  fire. 
Poor  old  Struthers,  during  an  especially  active  dis 
play,  invariably  gets  out  her  Bible.  Used  to  them  as 
I  am,  I  find  they  can  still  touch  me  with  awe.  They 
make  me  lonesome.  They  seem  like  the  search-lights 
of  God,  showing  up  my  human  littlenesses  of  soul. 
They  are  Armadas  of  floating  glory  reminding  me 
there  are  seas  I  can  never  traverse.  And  the  farther 

149 


150  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

north  one  goes,  of  course,  the  more  magnificent  the 
displays. 

Last  night  we  watched  the  auroral  bands  gather 
and  grow  in  a  cold  green  sky,  straight  to  the  north 
of  us,  and  then  waver  and  deepen  until  they  reached 
the  very  zenith,  where  they  hung,  swaying  curtains 
of  fire.  No  wonder  the  redskins  call  that  wild 
pageantry  of  color  the  ghost-dance  of  their  gods. 
Even  as  we  watched  them,  opal  and  gold  and  rose  and 
orange  and  green,  we  could  see  them  come  wheeling 
down  on  our  little  world  like  an  army  of  angels  with 
incandescent  swords.  It  made  one  imagine  that  the 
very  heavens  were  aflame,  going  up  in  quivering  veils 
of  white  and  red  and  green.  And  when  it  was  over  I 
listened  to  a  long  argument  about  the  Aurora 
Borealis,  or  the  Aurora  Polaris,  as  Gershom  insisted 
it  should  be  called. 

Dinky-Dunk  contended  that  one  could  hear  these 
Northern  Lights  overhead,  on  a  clear  night.  He 
described  the  sound  as  sometimes  a  faint  crackling, 
like  that  of  a  comb  drawn  through  your  hair,  and 
sometimes  as  a  soft  rustling  noise,  like  the  rustling  of 
a  silk  petticoat  heard  through  a  closed  door,  coming 
closer  and  closer  as  the  display  wavered  farther  and 
farther  toward  the  south. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  151 

Gershom  was  disposed  to  dispute  this,  so  our  old 
Klondiker,  Whinstane  Sandy,  was  called  in  to  give 
evidence.  He  did  so  promptly  and  positively,  saying 
he'd  heard  the  Lights  many  a  night  in  the  Far  North. 
Gershom  is  still  unconvinced,  but  intends  to  look  up 
his  authorities  on  the  matter.  He  attributes  them 
to  sun-spots  and  asserts  it's  a  well-known  fact  they 
often  put  the  telephone  and  telegraph  wires  out  of 
commission.  He  has  proposed  that  we  sit  up  and 
study  them  some  night,  through  his  telescope,  which 
he  is  disinterring  from  the  bottom  of  his  trunk.  .  .  . 

My  lord  and  master  is  going  about  with  a  less 
clouded  eye,  for  he  has  succeeded  in  selling  the  Harris 
Ranch,  and  selling  it  for  thirty-five  hundred  dollars 
more  than  he  had  expected.  It  is  to  go,  eventually, 
to  some  tenderfoot  out  of  the  East,  to  some  tender 
foot  who  can  have  very  little  definite  knowledge  of 
land-values  in  this  jumping-off  place  on  the  edge  of 
the  world.  But  may  that  tenderfoot,  whoever  he  is, 
be  happy  in  his  new  home !  Dinky-Dunk  is  now  for 
ever  figuring  up  what  he  will  get  for  his  grain.  He's 
preoccupied  with  his  plans  for  branching  out  in  the 
business  world.  His  heart  is  no  longer  in  his  work 
here.  I  sometimes  feel  that  we're  all  merely  accidents 
in  his  life.  And  that  feeling  leaves  me  with  a  heart 


152  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

so  heavy  that  I  have  to  keep  busy,  or  I'd  fall  to 
luxuriating  in  that  self-pity  which  is  good  for  neither 
man  nor  beast. 

Yet  Dinky-Dunk  is  not  all  hardness.  He  sur 
prises  me,  now  and  then,  by  disturbing  little 
gestures  of  boyishness.  He  announced  to  me  the 
other  night  that  the  only  way  to  get  any  use 
out  of  a  worn-out  husband  was  to  revamp  him, 
with  the  accent  on  the  vamp.  I  understood  what 
he  meant,  and  I  think  I  actually  changed  color 
a  trifle.  But  I  know  of  nothing  more  desolating 
than  trying  to  make  love  to  a  man  either  against  his 
will  or  against  your  own  will.  It  would  be  a  terrible 
thing  to  have  him  tell  you  there  was  no  longer  any 
kick  in  your  kisses.  So  I  remain  on  my  dignity.  I 
am  companionable,  and  nothing  more.  When  we 
were  saying  good-by,  the  last  time  he  went  off  to  the 
city,  and  he  looked  up  at  my  perfunctory  and  quite 
meaningless  peck  on  his  cheek,  I  felt  myself  blushing 
before  his  quiet  and  half-quizzical  stare.  Then  he 
laughed  a  little  as  he  turned  away  and  pulled  on  his 
gauntlets.  "The  sweeter  the  champagne,  I  suppose, 
the  colder  it  should  be  served !"  he  rather  cryptically 
remarked  as  he  climbed  into  the  waiting  car.  And 
yesterday  he  let  his  soul  emerge  from  its  tent  of 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  153 

reticence  when  he  climbed  up  on  the  wagon-box  to 
stare  out  over  his  sea  of  all  but  ripened  wheat. 
"Come,  money !"  he  said,  with  his  arms  stretched  out 
before  him.  Now,  that  was  a  trick  which  he  had 
caught  from  my  little  Dinkie.  I  don't  know  how  or 
where  the  boy  first  picked  up  the  habit,  but  when  he 
particularly  wants  something  he  stands  solemnly  out 
in  the  open,  with  his  two  little  arms  outstretched,  as 
though  he  were  supplicating  Heaven  itself,  and  says 
"Come,  jack-knife !"  or  "Come,  jelly-roll !"  or  "Come, 
rain !"  according  to  his  particular  desires  of  the  par 
ticular  moment.  I  think  he  really  caught  it  from 
an  illustration  in  The  Arabian  Nights,  from  the  pic 
ture  of  Cassim  grandiloquently  proclaiming  "Open 
Sesame!"  He  is  an  imaginative  little  beggar. 
"Mummy,"  he  said  to  me  the  other  night,  "see  all  the 
moonlight  that's  been  spilled  on  the  grass !"  But 
children  are  made  that  way.  Even  my  sage  little 
Poppsy,  when  a  marigold-leaf  fell  in  the  bowl  of  our 
solitary  gold-fish,  cried  out  to  me:  "See,  Mummy, 
our  fish  has  had  a  baby !"  Sex  is  still  an  enigma  to 
her,  as  much  an  enigma  as  it  was  away  last  spring 
when,  not  being  quite  sure  whether  her  new  kitten 
was  a  little  boy-cat  or  a  little  girl-cat,  she  saga 
ciously  christened  it  "Willie- Alice."  And  a  few  weeks 


later,  when  the  unmistakable  appearance  of  tail- 
feathers  finally  persuaded  even  her  optimistic  young 
heart  that  the  two  chicks  which  had  been  bequeathed 
to  her  were  dishearteningly  masculine  in  their  tenden 
cies,  she  officially  re-christened  the  apostate  "Elaine" 
and  "Rowena,"  and  thereafter  solemnly  accepted 
them  as  "Archie"  and  "Albert."  And  while  speaking 
of  this  mysteriously  ramifying  factor  of  sex,  I  am 
compelled  to  acknowledge  that  I  encountered  a  rather 
disturbing  little  back-flare  of  Freudian  hell-fire  only 
a  couple  of  evenings  ago.  It  took  my  thoughts  gal 
loping  back  to  the  time  in  our  post-nuptial  era  when 
Dinky-Dunk  went  Berserker  and  chased  me  around 
the  haystacks  with  my  hair  flying.  I'd  taken  Dinkie 
upon  my  lap,  and,  without  quite  knowing  it,  sat 
stroking  his  frowsy  young  head.  My  thoughts,  in 
fact,  were  a  thousand  miles  away.  Then,  still  without 
giving  much  attention  to  what  I  was  doing,  I  squeezed 
that  warm  little  body  up  close  against  my  own.  I 
was  astounded,  the  next  moment,  to  see  my  small 
offspring  turn  on  me  with  all  the  lusty  fierceness  of 
the  cave  man.  He  got  his  arms  about  me  and  buried 
his  face  in  my  neck  and  kissed  me  as  no  gentleman, 
big  or  little,  should  ever  kiss  a  lady.  His  small  body 
was  shaken  with  a  subliminal  and  quite  unexpected 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  155 

gust  of  feeling,  just  as  I've  seen  a  June-time  garden 
shaken  by  an  unexpected  gust  of  wind.  It  passed 
away,  of  course,  about  as  quickly  as  it  came — but 
with  it  went  a  scattering  of  the  white  petals  of  child 
hood  unconcern. 

I  don't  suppose  my  poor  little  Dinkie  has  yet 
awakened  to  the  fact  that  his  body  is  a  worn  river-bed 
down  which  must  race  the  freshets  of  far-off  racial 
instincts.  But  the  thing  disturbed  me  more  than  I'd 
be  willing  to  admit.  There  are  murky  corridors  in 
the  house  of  life.  They  stand  there,  and  they  must 
be  faced.  There  are  rooms  where  the  air  must  be 
kept  stirring,  corners  into  which  the  clear  sanity  of 
sunlight  must  be  thrown.  Dinkie,  since  he  has 
stepped  into  his  first  experience  in  the  keeping  of  rab 
bits,  has  been  asking  me  a  number  of  rather  discon 
certing  questions.  His  father,  I  notice,  has  the  habit 
of  half-diffidently  referring  the  boy  to  me,  just  as  I 
nursed  the  earlier  habit  of  referring  him  to  his  father. 
But  some  time  soon  Dinkie  and  I  will  have  to  have  a 
serious  talk  about  this  thing  called  Life,  this  Life 
which  is  so  much  more  uncompromisingly  brutal  than 
the  child-mind  can  conceive. .  .  . 

By  the  way,  there's  a  lot  of  nonsense  talked  about 
motherhood  softening  women.  It  may  soften  them  in 


156  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

some  ways,  but  there  are  many  others  in  which  it 
hardens  them.  It  draws  their  power  of  love  together 
into  a  fixed  point,  just  as  the  lens  of  a  burning-glass 
concentrates  the  vague  warmth  of  the  sun  into  one 
small  and  fiercely  illuminated  area.  It  is  a  form  o{ 
selfishnessj  I  suppose,  but  it  is  a  selfishness  nature 
imposes  upon  us.  And  it  is  sanctified  by  the  end  it 
serves.  At  every  turn,  now,  I  find  that  I  am  thinking 
of  my  children.  I  seem  to  have  my  eyes  set  steadily 
on  something  far,  far  ahead.  I'm  not  quite  certain 
just  what  this  something  is.  It's  a  sort  of  secret 
between  me  and  the  Master  of  Life.  But  the  memory 
of  it  makes  my  days  more  endurable.  It  allows  me  to 
face  the  future  without  a  quaver  of  regret.  I  am  a 
woman,  and  I  am  no  longer  young.  But  it  gives  me 
courage  to  laugh  in  the  teeth  of  Time. 

And  to  laugh,  to  laugh  whatever  happens — that  is 
the  great  thing!  It  isn't  age  I  dread.  But  I'd  hate 
to  lose  that  lightness  with  which  those  blessed  ones 
we  call  the  young  can  move  through  the  world,  that 
self-renewing  freshness  which  converts  every  day 
break  into  a  dewy  new  world  and  mints  every  sunrise 
into  a  brand  new  life  ...  I  asked  Gershom  to-day 
if  he  could  possibly  tell  me  how  many  Parker  House 
rolls  a  square  mile  of  wheat  running  forty  bushels  to 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  157 

V 

the  acre  would  make.  And  he  surprised  me  by  inquir 
ing  how  many  quarts  of  buttermilk  it  would  take  to 
shingle  a  cow.  Gershom  is  widening  out  a  bit.  .  .  . 

Dinkie,  I  notice,  has  just  compiled  a  list  of  horses. 
I  read  from  his  carefully  ruled  half-page: 

"Draght  horses ;  carriege  horses ;  riding  horses ; 
racing  horses ;  ponyies ;  percheron  from  f ranee ;  Bel- 
gain  from  Bel j him;  shire  clyesdale  and  saffold  punch 
from  great  Britain ;  f rench  coach  and  German  coach ; 
contucky  saddle  horses;  through-breads;  Shetland 
ponies;  mushstand  ponies;  pacers  and  pintoes." 
Thus  recordeth  my  Toddler. 


Sunday  the  Ninth 

I  HAVE  had  Dinkie  in  bed  for  the  last  five  days, 
with  a  bruised  foot.  Duncan  shortened  the  stirrups 
and  put  the  boy  on  Briquette,  who  had  just  proved  a 
handful  for  even  an  old  horse-wrangler  like  Cuba 
Sebeck.  Briquette  bucked  and  threw  the  boy.  And 
Dinkie,  in  the  mix-up,  got  a  hoof-pound  on  the  ankle. 
No  bones  were  broken,  luckily,  but  the  foot  was  very 
sore  and  swollen  for  a  few  days.  No  word  about  the 
episode  has  passed  between  Duncan  and  me.  But  I'm 
glad,  all  things  considered,  that  I  was  not  a  witness 
of  the  accident.  The  clouds  are  already  quite  heavy 
enough  over  Casa  Grande. 

Dinkie  and  his  mater,  however,  have  been  drawn 
much  closer  together  during  the  last  few  days.  I've 
talked  to  him,  and  read  to  him,  and  without  either  of 
us  being  altogether  conscious  of  it  there  has  been  an 
opening  of  a  closed  door  or  two.  Dinkie  loves  to  be 
read  to.  The  new  world  of  the  imagination  is  just 
opening  up  to  him.  And  I  envy  the  rapture  of  the 
child  in  books,  rapture  not  yet  spoiled  by  the  intel 
lectual  conceit  of  the  grown-up. 

158 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  159 

But  I'm  not  the  only  reader  about  this  ranch.  I'm 
afraid  the  copy  of  Burns  which  Santa  Glaus  brought 
to  Whinstane  Sandy  last  Christmas  is  not  adding  to 
his  matrimonial  tendencies  as  love-plaints  of  that 
nature  should.  At  noon,  as  soon  as  dinner  is  over, 
he  sits  on  the  back  step,  poring  over  his  beloved 
Tammas.  And  at  night,  now  that  the  evenings  are 
chillier,  he  retreats  to  the  bunk-house  stove,  where  he 
smokes  and  reads  aloud.  His  own  mother,  he  tells 
me,  used  to  say  many  of  those  pieces  to  him  when 
he  was  a  wee  laddie.  He  both  outraged  and  angered 
poor  Struthers,  last  Sunday,  by  reading  Tarn 
O'Shanter  aloud  to  her.  That  autumnal  vestal  pro 
claimed  that  it  was  anything  but  suitable  literature 
for  an  old  philanderer  who  still  saw  fit  to  live  alone. 
It  showed,  she  averred,  a  shocking  lack  of  respect  for 
women-folk  and  should  be  taken  over  by  the  police. 

Struthers  even  begins  to  suspect  that  this  much- 
thumbed  volume  of  Burns  lies  at  the  root  of  Whin- 
nie's  accumulating  misanthropy.  She  has  asked  me 
if  I  thought  a  volume  of  Mrs.  Hemans  would  be  of 
service  in  leading  the  deluded  old  misogynist  back  to 
the  light.  The  matter  has  become  a  more  urgent  one 
since  Cuba  Sebeck  suffered  a  severe  bilious  attack  and 
a  consequent  sea-change  in  his  affections.  But  I'm 


160  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

afraid  our  Whinnie  is  too  old  a  bird  to  be  trapped 
by  printer's  ink.  I  notice,  in  fact,  that  Struthers  is 
once  more  spending  her  evenings  in  knitting  winter 
socks.  And  I  have  a  shadow  of  a  suspicion  that  they 
are  for  the  obdurate  one. 

My  Dinkie,  by  the  way,  has  written  his  first  poem, 
or,  rather,  his  first  two  poems.  The  first  one  he 
slipped  folded  into  my  sewing-basket  and  I  found  it 
when  I  was  looking  for  new  buttons  for  Pauline 
Augusta's  red  sweater.  It  reads: 

No  more  we  smel  the  sweet  clover, 
Floting  on  the  breeze  all  over. 
But  now  we  hear  the  wild  geese  calling: 
And  lissen,  tis  the  grey  owl  yowling. 

• 

The  second  one,  however,  was  a  more  ambitious 
effort.  He  worked  over  it,  propped  up  in  bed,  for  an 
hour  or  two.  Then,  having  looked  upon  his  work 
and  having  seen  that  it  was  good,  he  blushingly 
passed  it  over  to  me.  So  I  went  to  the  window  and 

read  it. 

:''*'  ' 

O  blue-bird,  happy  robbin — 

Who  teached  those  birds  to  stick  theirselves  together? 
Who  teached  them  how  to  put  their  tails  on? 
Who  teached  them  how  to  hold  tight  on  the  tree  tops  ? 
Who  gived  them  all  the  fetthers  on  their  brest? 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  161 

Who  gived  them  all  the  eggs  with  little  birdies  in 

them  ? 

Who  teached  them  how  to  make  the  shells  so  blue? 
Who  teached  them  how  to  com  home  in  the  dark? 
Twas  God.  Twas  God.  He  teached  him ! 

I  read  it  over  slowly,  with  a  crazy  fluttering  of  the 
heart  which  I  could  never  explain.  They  were  so 
trivial,  those  little  halting  lines,  and  yet  so  momen 
tous  to  me !  It  was  life  seeking  expression,  life  grop 
ing  so  mysteriously  toward  music.  It  was  man 
emerging  out  of  the  dusk  of  time.  It  was  Rodin's 
Penseur,  not  in  grim  and  stately  bronze,  but  in  a 
soft-eyed  and  white-bodied  child,  groping  his  stum 
bling  way  toward  the  border-land  of  consciousness, 
staring  out  on  a  new  world  and  finding  it  wonderful. 
It  was  my  Little  Stumbler,  my  Precious  Piece-of-Life, 
walking  with  his  arm  first  linked  through  the  arm  of 
Mystery.  It  was  my  Dinkie  looking  over  the  ram 
part  of  the  home-nest  and  breaking  lark-like  into 
song. 

I  went  back  to  the  bed  and  sat  down  on  the  edge 
of  it,  and  took  my  man-child  in  my  arms. 

"It's  wonderful,  Dinkie,"  I  said,  trying  to  hide  the 
tears  I  was  so  ashamed  of.  "It's  so  wonderful,  my 
boy,  that  I'm  going  to  keep  it  with  me,  always,  as 


162  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

long  as  I  live.  And  some  day,  when  you  are  a  great 
man,  and  all  the  world  is  at  your  feet,  I'm  going  to 
bring  it  to  you  and  show  it  to  you.  For  I  know  now 
that  you  are  going  to  be  a  great  man,  and  that  your 
old  mother  is  going  to  live  to  be  so  proud  of  you  it'll 
make  her  heart  ache  with  joy !" 

He  hugged  me  close,  in  a  little  back-wash  of  rap 
ture,  and  then  settled  down  on  his  pillows. 

"I  could  do  better  ones  than  that,"  he  finally  said, 
with  a  glowing  eye. 

"Yes,"  I  agreed.  "They'll  be  better  and  better. 
And  that'll  make  your  old  Mummsy  prouder  and 
prouder !" 

He  lay  silent  for  several  minutes.  Then  he  looked 
at  the  square  of  paper  which  I  held  folded  in  my 
hand. 

"I'd  like  to  send  it  to  Uncle  Peter,"  he  rather 
startled  me  by  saying. 


Saturday  the  Twenty-Ninth 

ONCE  more  I'm  a  grass  widow.  My  Duncan  is 
awa'.  He  scooted  for  Calgary  as  soon  as  his  thresh 
ing-work  was  finished  up.  But  that  tumult  is  over 
and  once  more  I've  a  chance  to  sit  down  and  com 
mune  with  my  soul.  Everything  here  is  over-running 
with  wheat.  Our  bins  are  bursting.  The  lord  of  the 
realm  is  secretly  delighted,  but  he  has  said  little  about 
it.  He  has  a  narrow  course  to  steer.  He  is  grateful 
for  the  money  that  this  wheat  will  bring  in  to  him, 
yet  he  can  see  it  would  never  do  to  harp  too  loudly 
on  the  productiveness  of  our  land — on  my  land,  I 
ought  to  say,  for  Casa  Grande  has  now  been  for 
mally  deeded  to  me.  I  find  no  sense  of  triumph, 
however,  in  that  transfer.  I  am  depressed,  in  fact, 
at  the  very  thought  of  it.  It  seems  to  carry  a  vague 
air  of  the  valedictory.  But  I  refuse  to  be  intimidated 
by  the  future. 

Gershom  and  I,  indeed,  have  been  indulging  in  the 
study  of  astronomy.  The  air  was  crystal  clear  last 
night,  so  that  solemn  youth  suggested  that  we  take 

163 


164  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

out  the  old  telescope  and  study  the  stars.  Which  we 
did.  And  which  was  much  more  wonderful  than  I 
had  imagined.  But  Gershom  had  no  reflector,  so 
after  getting  a  neck-ache  trying  to  inspect  the 
heavens  while  on  our  feet  we  took  the  old  buffalo-robe 
and  a  couple  of  rugs  out  to  a  straw-pile  that  had  been 
hauled  in  to  protect  our  winter  perennials.  There 
we  indecorously  reposed  on  our  backs  and  went  star 
gazing  in  comfort.  And  Gershom  even  forgot  that 
painful  bashfulness  of  his  when  he  fell  to  talking 
about  the  planets.  He  slipped  out  of  his  shell  and 
spoke  with  genuine  feeling. 

He  suggested  that  we  begin  with  the  Big  Dipper, 
which  I  could  locate  easily  enough  well  up  in  the 
northern  sky.  That,  Gershom  told  me,  was  some 
times  called  the  Great  Bear,  though  it  was  only  a 
part  of  the  real  Ursa  Major  of  the  astronomers. 
Then  he  showed  me  Benetnasch  at  the  end  of  the 
Dipper's  handle,  and  Mizar  at  the  bend  in  the  handle, 
then  Alioth,  and  then  Megrez,  which  joins  the  handle 
to  the  bowl.  Then  he  showed  me  Phaed  and  Merak, 
which  mark  the  bottom  of  the  bowl,  and  then  Dubhe 
at  the  bowl's  outer  rim. 

I  tried  hard,  but  I  was  very  stupid  about  getting 
the  names  right.  Then  Gershom  asked  me  to  look 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  165 

up  at  Mizar,  and  see  if  I  could  make  out  a  small  star 
quite  close  to  it.  I  did  so,  without  much  trouble,  and 
Gershom  thereupon  condescended  to  admit  that  I  had 
exceptionally  good  eyes.  For  that  star,  he  explained, 
was  Alcor,  and  Alcor  was  Arabic  for  "the  proof," 
and  for  centuries  and  centuries  the  ability  to  see 
that  star  had  been  accepted  as  the  proof  of  good 
vision. 

Then  Gershom  went  on  to  the  other  constellations, 
and  talked  of  suns  of  the  first  and  second  magnitude, 
and  pointed  out  Sirius,  in  whose  honor  great  temples 
had  once  been  built  in  Egypt,  and  Arcturus,  the  same 
old  Arcturus  that  a  Hebrew  poet  by  the  name  of 
Job  had  sung  about,  and  Vega  and  Capella  and 
Rigel,  which  he  said  sent  out  eight  thousand  times 
more  light  than  our  sun,  and  is  at  least  thirty-four 
thousand  times  as  big. 

But  it  only  made  me  dizzy  and  staggered  my  mind. 
I  couldn't  comprehend  the  distances  he  was  talking 
about.  I  just  couldn't  make  it,  any  more  than  a 
bronco  that  had  been  used  to  jumping  a  six-barred 
gate  could  vault  over  a  windmill  tower.  And  I  had 
to  tell  Gershom  that  it  didn't  do  a  bit  of  good  inform 
ing  me  that  Sirius  was  comparatively  close  to  us,  as  it 
stood  only  nine  light-years  away.  I  remembered  how 


166  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

he  had  explained  that  light  travels  one  hundred  and 
eighty-six  thousand  miles  a  second,  and  that  there 
are  thirty  million  seconds  in  a  year,  so  that  a  light- 
year  is  about  five  and  a  half  million  million  of  miles. 
But  when  he  started  to  tell  me  that  some  of  the  so- 
called  photographic  stars  are  thirty-two  thousand 
light-years  away  from  us  my  imagination  just  curled 
up  and  died.  It  didn't  mean  anything  to  me.  It 
couldn't.  I  tried  in  vain  to  project  my  puny  little 
soul  through  all  that  space.  At  first  it  was  rather 
bewildering.  Then  it  grew  into  something  touched 
with  grandeur.  Then  it  took  on  an  aspect  of  awful- 
ness.  And  from  that  it  grew  into  a  sort  of  ghastli- 
ness,  until  the  machinery  of  the  mind  choked  and 
balked  and  stopped  working  altogether,  like  an  over 
loaded  motor.  I  had  to  reach  out  in  the  cold  air  and 
catch  hold  of  Gershom's  arm.  I  felt  a  hunger  to 
cling  to  something  warm  and  human. 

"We  call  this  world  of  ours  a  pretty  big  world," 
Gershom  was  saying.  "But  look  at  Betelgeuse  up 
there,  which  Michelson  has  been  able  to  measure.  He 
has,  at  least,  succeeded  in  measuring  the  angle  at  the 
eye  that  Betelgeuse  subtends,  so  that  after  estimating 
its  parallax  as  given  by  a  heliometer,  it's  merely  a 
matter  of  trigonometry  to  work  out  the  size  of  the 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  167 

star.  And  he  estimated  Betelgeuse  to  be  two  hundred 
and  sixty  million  miles  in  diameter.  That  means  it 
would  take  twenty-seven  million  of  our  suns  to  equal 
it  in  bulk.  So  that  this  big  world  of  ours,  which  takes 
so  many  weeks  to  crawl  about  on  the  fastest  ships 
and  the  fastest  trains,  is  really  a  mote  of  dust,  some 
thing  smaller  than  the  smallest  pin-prick,  compared 
to  that  far-away  sun  up  there  on  the  shoulder  of 
Orion !" 

"Stop!"  I  cried.  "You're  positively  giving  me  a 
chill  up  my  spine.  You're  making  me  feel  so  lone 
some,  Gershom,  that  you're  giving  me  goose-flesh. 
You're  not  leaving  me  anything  to  get  hold  of.  You 
haven't  even  left  me  anything  to  stand  on.  I'm  only 
a  little  speck  of  Nothing  on  a  nit  of  a  world  in  a  puny 
little  universe  which  is  only  a  little  freckle  on  the  face 
of  some  greater  universe  which  is  only  a  lost  child 
in  a  city  of  bigger  constellations  which  in  turn  have 
still  lonelier  suns  to  swing  about,  until  I  go  on  and 
on,  and  wonder  with  a  gasp  what  is  beyond  the  end 
of  space.  But  I  can't  go  on  thinking  about  it.  I 
simply  can't.  It  upsets  me,  the  same  as  an  earth 
quake  would,  when  you  look  about  for  something 
solid  and  find  that  even  your  solid  old  earth  is  going 
back  on  you !" 


168  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"On  the  contrary,"  said  Gershom  as  he  put  down 
his  telescope,  "I  know  nothing  more  conducive  to 
serenity  than  the  study  of  astronomy.  It  has  a  ten 
dency  to  teach  you,  in  the  first  place,  just  how  insig 
nificant  you  are  in  the  general  scheme  of  things.  The 
naked  eye,  in  clear  air  like  this,  can  see  over  eight 
thousand  stars.  The  larger  telescopes  reveal  a  hun 
dred  million  stars,  and  the  photographic  dry-plate 
has  shown  that  there  are  several  thousands  of  millions 
which  can  be  definitely  recorded.  So  that  you  and 
I  are  not  altogether  the  whole  works.  And  to  remem 
ber  that,  when  we  are  feeling  a  bit  important,  is  good 
for  our  Ego !" 

I  didn't  answer  him,  for  I  was  busy  just  then 
studying  the  Milky  Way.  And  I  couldn't  help  feel 
ing  that  it  must  have  been  on  a  night  like  this  that  a 
certain  young  shepherd  watching  his  flocks  on  the 
uplands  of  Canaan  sat  studying  the  infinite  stairways 
of  star-dust  that  "sloped  through  darkness  up  to 
God"  and  was  moved  to  say :  "When  I  consider  the 
heavens,  the  work  of  Thy  fingers,  the  moon  and  the 
stars  which  Thou  hast  ordained,  what  is  man  that 
Thou  art  mindful  of  him,  or  the  son  of  man  that 
Thou  visitest  him?" 

"Yes,  Gershom,  it's  horribly  humiliating,"  I  said 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  169 

as  I  squinted  up  at  those  serene  heavens.  "They  last 
forever.  And  we  come  and  go  out,  and  nobody  knows 
why !" 

"Pardon  me,"  corrected  the  literal-minded  Ger- 
shom.  "They  do  not  last  forever.  They  come  and 
go  out,  just  as  we  do.  Only  they  take  longer.  Con 
sider  the  Dipper  up  there,  for  instance.  A  hundred 
thousand  years  from  now  that  Dipper  will  be  per 
ceptibly  altered,  for  we  know  the  lateral  movement 
of  Dubhe  and  Benetnasch  will  give  the  outer  line  of 
the  bowl  a  greater  flare  and  make  the  crook  of  the 
handle  a  trifle  sharper.  Even  a  thousand  years  would 
show  change  enough  for  instruments  to  detect.  And 
a  million  years  will  probably  show  the  group  pretty 
well  broken  up.  But  the  one  regrettable  feature,  of 
course,  is  that  we  will  not  be  here  to  see  it." 

"Where  will  we  be?"  I  asked  Gershom. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  finally  admitted,  after  an  un 
expectedly  long  silence. 

"But  will  it  all  go  on,  forever  and  forever  and  for 
ever?" 

"To  do  so  is  not  in  the  nature  of  things,"  was  Ger- 
shom's  quiet-toned  reply.  "It  is  the  destiny  of  our 
own  earth,  of  course,  which  most  interests  us.  And 
however  we  look  at  it,  that  destiny  is  a  gloomy  one. 


170  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Its  heat  may  fail.  Stupart,  in  fact,  has  established 
that  its  temperature  is  going  down  one  and  a  half 
degrees  every  thousand  years.  Or  its  volcanic  ele 
vating  forces  may  give  out,  so  that  the  land  will 
subside  and  the  water  wash  over  it  from  pole  to  pole. 
Or  a  comet  may  wipe  up  its  atmosphere,  the  same  as 
one  sponge-sweep  wipes  up  moisture  from  a  slate. 
Or  the  sun  itself  may  cool,  so  that  the  last  of  our  race 
will  stand  huddled  together  in  a  solarium  somewhere 
on  the  Equator.  Or  as  our  sun  rushes  toward  Lyra, 
it  may  bump  into  a  derelict  sun,  just  as  a  ship  bumps 
into  a  wreck.  If  that  derelict  were  as  big  as  our  sun, 
astronomers  would  see  it  at  least  fifteen  years  before 
the  collision.  For  five  or  six  years  it  would  even  be 
visible  to  the  naked  eye,  so  that  the  race,  or  what 
remained  of  the  race,  would  have  plenty  of  time  to 
think  things  over  and  put  its  house  in  order.  Then, 
of  course,  we'd  go  up  like  a  singed  feather.  And 
there'd  be  no  more  breakfasts  to  worry  over,  and  no 
more  wheat  to  thresh,  and  no  more  school  fires  to 
start  in  the  morning,  and  no  more  children  to  make 
think  you  know  more  than  you  really  do,  and  not 
even  any  more  hearts  to  ache.  There  would  be  just 
Emptiness,  just  voiceless  and  never-ending  Nothing 
ness  !" 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  171 

Gershom  stopped  speaking  and  sat  staring  up  at 
Orion.  Then  he  turned  and  looked  at  me. 

"What's  the  matter?"  he  asked,  for  he  must  have 
felt  my  shiver  under  the  robe. 

"Nothing,"  I  said  in  a  thin  and  pallid  voice.  "Only 
I  think  I'll  go  back  to  the  house.  And  I'm  going  to 
make  a  pot  of  good  hot  cocoa!"  .  .  .  And  that's 
mostly  what  life  is :  making  little  pots  of  cocoa  to 
keep  our  bodies  warm  in  the  midst  of  a  never-ending 
chilliness ! 


Tuesday  the  Eighth 

MY  husband  is  home  again.  He  came  back  with  the 
first  blizzard  of  the  winter  and  had  a  hard  time  get 
ting  through  to  Casa  Grande.  This  gives  him  all  the 
excuses  he  could  desire  for  railing  at  prairie  life.  I 
told  him,  after  patiently  listening  to  him  cussing 
about  everything  in  sight,  that  it  was  plain  to  see 
that  he  belonged  to  the  land  of  the  beaver.  He 
promptly  requested  to  know  what  I  meant  by  that. 

"Doesn't  the  beaver  regard  it  as  necessary  to  dam 
his  home  before  he  considers  it  fit  to  live  in?"  I 
retorted.  But  Duncan,  in  that  estranging  new  mood 
of  his,  didn't  relax  a  line.  He  even  announced,  a 
little  later  on,  that  a  quick-silver  wit  might  be  all 
right  if  it  could  be  kept  from  running  over.  And  it 
was  my  turn  to  ask  if  he  had  any  particular  reference 
to  allusions. 

"Well,  for  one  thing,"  he  told  me,  "there's  this 
tiresome  habit  of  hitching  nicknames  on  to  everything 
in  sight." 

I  asked  him  what  names  he  objected  to. 
172 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  173 

"To  begin  right  at  home,"  he  retorted,  "I  regard 
'Dinkie'  as  an  especially  silly  name  for  a  big  hulk  of 
a  boy.  I  think  it's  about  time  that  youngster  was 
called  by  his  proper  name." 

I'd  never  thought  about  it,  to  tell  the  truth.  His 
real  name,  I  remembered,  was  Elmer  Duncan  McKail. 
That  endearing  diminutive  of  "Dinkie"  had  stuck  to 
him  from  his  baby  days,  and  in  my  fond  and  foolish 
eyes,  of  course,  had  always  seemed  to  fit  him.  But 
even  Gershom  had  spoken  to  me  on  the  matter, 
months  before,  asking  me  if  I  preferred  the  boy  to 
be  known  as  "Dinkie"  to  his  school  mates.  And  I'd 
told  Gershom  that  I  didn't  believe  we  could  get  rid  of 
the  "Dinkie"  if  we  wanted  to.  His  father,  I  knew, 
had  once  objected  to  "Duncan,"  as  he  had  no  liking 
to  be  dubbed  "Old  Duncan"  while  his  offspring  would 
answer  to  "Young  Duncan."  And  "Duncan,"  as  a 
name,  had  never  greatly  appealed  to  me.  But  it  is 
plain  now  that  I  have  been  remiss  in  the  matter.  So 
hereafter  we'll  have  to  make  an  effort  to  have  our 
little  Dinkie  known  as  Elmer.  It's  like  bringing  a 
new  child  into  the  family  circle,  a  new  child  we're  not 
quite  acquainted  with.  But  these  things,  I  suppose, 
have  to  be  faced.  So  hereafter  my  laddie  shall 
officially  be  known  as  "Elmer,"  Elmer  Duncan 


174  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

McKail.  And  I  have  started  the  ball  rolling  by  duly 
inscribing  in  his  new  books  "Elmer  D.  McKail"  and 
requesting  Gershom  to  address  his  pupil  as  "Elmer." 

I've  been  wondering,  in  the  meantime,  if  Duncan  is 
going  to  insist  on  a  revision  of  all  our  ranch  names, 
the  names  so  tangled  up  with  love  and  good-natured 
laughter  and  memories  of  the  past.  Take  our  horses 
alone:  Tumble-weed  and  timeless  Tithonus,  Buntie 
and  Briquette,  Laughing-gas  and  Coco  the  Third, 
Mudski  and  Tarzanette.  I'd  hate  now  to  lose  those 
names.  They  are  the  register  of  our  friendly  love  for 
our  animals. 

It  begins  to  creep  through  this  thick  head  of  mine 
that  my  husband  no  longer  nurses  any  real  love  for 
either  these  animals  or  prairie  life.  And  if  that  Is 
the  case,  he  will  never  get  anything  out  of  prairie 
living.  It  will  be  useless  for  him  even  to  try.  So  I 
may  as  well  do  what  I  can  to  reconcile  myself  to  the 
inevitable.  I  am  not  without  my  moments  of  revolt. 
But  in  those  moods  when  I  feel  a  bit  uppish  I  remem 
ber  about  my  recent  venture  into  astronomy.  What's 
the  use  of  worrying,  anyway?  There  was  one  ice 
age,  and  there  is  going  to  be  another  ice  age.  I  tell 
myself  that  my  troubles  are  pretty  trivial,  after  all, 
since  I'm  only  one  of  many  millions  on  this  earth  and 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  175 

since  this  earth  is  only  one  of  many  millions  of  other 
earths  which  will  swing  about  their  suns  billions  and 
billions  of  years  after  I  and  my  children  and  my  chil 
dren's  children  are  withered  into  dust. 

It  rather  takes  my  breath  away,  at  times,  and  I 
shy  away  from  it  the  same  as  Pauline  Augusta  shies 
away  from  the  sight  of  blood.  It  reminds  me  of 
Chaddie's  New  York  lady  with  whom  the  Bishop 
ventured  to  discuss  ultimate  destinies.  "Yes,  I  sup 
pose  I  shall  enter  into  eternal  bliss,"  responded  this 
fair  lady,  "but  would  you  mind  not  discussing  such 
disagreeable  subjects  at  tea-time?" 

Speaking  of  disagreeable  subjects,  we  seem  to  have 
a  new  little  trouble-maker  here  at  Casa  Grande.  It's 
in  the  form  of  a  brindle  pup  called  Minty,  which 
Dinkie — I  mean,  of  course,  which  Elmer,  acquired  in 
exchange  for  a  jack-knife  and  what  was  left  of  his 
Swiss  Family  Robinson.  But  Minty  has  not  been 
well  treated  by  the  world,  and  was  brought  home  with 
a  broken  leg.  So  Whinnie  and  I  made  splints  out  of 
an  old  cigar-box  cover,  and  padded  the  fracture  with 
cotton  wool  and  bound  it  up  with  tape.  Minty,  in 
the  moderated  spirits  of  invalidism,  was  a  meek  and 
well  behaved  pup  during  the  first  few  days  after  his 
arrival,  sleeping  quietly  at  the  foot  of  Ewer's  bed 


176  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

and  stumping  around  after  his  new  master  like  a  war 
veteran  awaiting  his  discharge.  But  now  that 
Minty's  leg  is  getting  better  and  he  finds  himself  in 
a  world  that  flows  with  warm  milk  and  much  petting, 
he  betrays  a  tendency  to  use  any  odd  article  of  wear 
ing  apparel  as  a  teething-ring.  He  has  completely 
ruined  one  of  my  bedroom  slippers  and  done  Mexican- 
drawn-work  on  the  ends  of  the  two  living-room  win 
dow-curtains.  But  what  is  much  more  ominous, 
Minty  yesterday  got  hold  of  Dinky-Dunk's  Stetson 
and  made  one  side  of  its  rim  look  as  though  it  had 
been  put  through  a  meat-chopper.  So  my  lord  and 
master  has  been  making  inquiries  about  Minty  and 
Minty's  right  of  possession.  And  the  order  has  gone 
forth  that  hereafter  no  canines  are  to  sleep  in  this 
house.  It  impresses  me  as  a  trifle  unreasonable,  all 
things  considered,  and  Elmer,  with  a  rather  unsteady 
under-lip,  has  asked  me  if  Minty  must  be  taken  away 
from  him.  But  I  have  no  intention  of  countermand 
ing  Duncan's  order.  The  crust  over  the  volcano  is 
quite  thin  enough,  as  it  is.  And  whatever  happens, 
I  am  resolved  to  be  a  meek  and  dutiful  wife.  But  I've 
had  a  talk  with  Whinnie  and  he's  going  to  fix  up  a 
comfortable  box  behind  the  stove  in  the  bunk-house, 
and  there  the  exiled  Minty  will  soon  learn  to  repose 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  177 

in  peace.  It's  marvelous,  though,  how  that  little 
three-legged  animal  loves  my  Dinkie,  loves  my  Elmer, 
I  should  say.  He  licks  my  laddie's  shoes  and  yelps 
with  joy  at  the  smell  of  his  pillow  .  .  .  Poor  little 
abundant-hearted  mite,  overflowing  with  love!  But 
life,  I  suppose,  will  see  to  it  that  he  is  brought  to 
reason.  We  must  learn  not  to  be  too  happy  on  this 
earth.  And  we  must  learn  that  love  isn't  always 
given  all  it  asks  for. 


Thursday  the  Seventeenth 

THE  crust  over  the  volcano  has  shown  itself  to  be 
even  thinner  than  I  imagined.  The  lava-shell  gave 
way,  under  our  very  feet,  and  I've  had  a  glimpse  of 
the  molten  fury  that  can  flow  about  us  without  our 
knowing  it.  And  like  so  many  of  life's  tragic 
moments,  it  began  out  of  something  that  is  almost 
ridiculous  in  its  triviality. 

Night  before  last,  when  Struthers  was  rather  late 
in  setting  her  bread,  she  heard  Minty  scratching  and 
whimpering  at  the  back  door,  and  without  giving 
much  thought  to  what  she  was  doing,  let  him  into  the 
house.  Minty,  of  course,  went  scampering  up  to 
Dinkie's  bed,  where  he  slept  secretly  and  joyously 
until  morning.  And  all  might  have  been  well,  even 
at  this,  had  not  Minty's  return  to  his  kingdom  gone 
to  his  head.  To  find  some  fitting  way  of  expressing 
his  joy  must  have  taxed  that  brindle  pup's  ingenuity, 
for,  before  any  of  us  were  up,  he  descended  to  the 
living-room,  where  he  delightedly  and  diligently  pro 
ceeded  to  remove  the  upholstery  from  the  old  Ches- 

178 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  179 

terfield.  By  the  time  I  came  on  the  scene,  at  any  rate, 
there  was  nothing  but  a  grisly  skeleton  of  the  Ches 
terfield  left.  Now,  that  particular  piece  of  furniture 
had  known  hard  use,  and  there  were  places  where  the 
mohair  had  been  worn  through,  and  Fd  even  dis 
cussed  the  expediency  of  having  the  thing  done  over. 
But  I  knew  that  Minty's  efforts  to  hasten  this  move 
ment  would  not  meet  with  approval.  So  I  discreetly 
decided  to  have  Whinnie  and  Struthers  remove  the 
tell-tale  skeleton  to  the  bunk-house.  Before  that 
transfer  could  be  effected,  however,  the  Dour  Man 
invaded  the  living-room  and  stood  with  a  cold  and 
accusatory  eye  inspecting  that  monument  of  de- 
structiveness. 

"Where's  Elmer?"  he  demanded,  with  a  grim  look 
which  started  by  heart  pounding. 

"Elmer's  dressing,"  I  said  as  quietly  as  I  could. 
"Do  you  want  him?" 

"I  do,"  announced  my  husband,  whiter  in  the  face 
than  I  had  seen  him  for  many  a  day. 

"What  for?"  I  asked. 

"I  think  you  know  what  for,"  he  said,  meeting  my 
eye. 

"I'm  not  sure  that  I  do,"  I  found  the  courage  to 
retort.  "But  I'd  prefer  being  certain." 


180  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Duncan,  instead  of  answering  me,  went  to  the  foot 
of  the  stairs  and  called  his  son.  Then  he  strode  out 
of  the  room  and  out  of  the  house.  Struthers,  in  the 
meantime,  circumspectly  took  possession  of  Minty, 
who  was  still  indecorously  shaking  a  bit  of  mohair 
between  his  jocund  young  teeth.  She  and  Minty  van 
ished  from  the  scene.  A  moment  later,  however,  Dun 
can  walked  back  into  the  room.  He  had  a  riding- 
quirt  in  his  hand. 

"Where's  that  boy  ?"  he  demanded. 

I  went  out  to  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  where  I  met 
Elmer  coming  down,  buttoning  his  waist  as  he  came. 
For  just  a  moment  his  eye  met  mine.  It  was  a  ques 
tioning  eye,  but  not  a  cowardly  one.  I  had  intended 
to  speak  to  him,  but  my  voice,  for  some  reason,  didn't 
respond  to  my  will.  So  I  merely  took  the  boy's  hand 
and  led  him  into  the  living-room.  There  his  father 
stood  confronting  him. 

"Did  that  pup  sleep  on  your  bed  last  night?" 
demanded  the  man  with  the  quirt. 

"Yes,"  said  the  child,  after  a  moment  of  silence. 

"Did  you  hear  me  say  that  no  dog  was  to  sleep  in 
this  house?"  demanded  the  child's  father. 

"Yes,"  said  Elmer,  with  his  own  face  as  white  as 
his  father's. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  181 

"Then  I  think  that's  about  enough,"  asserted 
Duncan,  turning  a  challenging  eye  in  my  direction. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  I  asked.  My  voice 
was  shaking,  in  spite  of  myself. 

"I'm  going  to  whale  that  youngster  within  an  inch 
of  his  life,"  said  the  master  of  the  house,  with  a 
deadly  sort  of  intentness. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  do  that,"  I  quavered,  wonder 
ing  why  my  words,  even  as  I  uttered  them,  should 
seem  so  inadequate. 

"Of  course  you  don't,"  mocked  my  husband.  "But 
this  is  the  limit.  And  what  you  want  isn't  going  to 
count !" 

"I  don't  want  you  to  do  that,"  I  repeated.  Some 
thing  in  my  voice,  I  suppose,  must  have  arrested  him, 
for  he  stood  there,  staring  at  me,  with  a  little  knot 
coming  and  going  on  one  side  of  his  skull,  just  in 
front  of  his  upper  ear-tip. 

"And  why  not?"  he  asked,  still  with  that  hateful 
rough  ironic  note  in  his  voice. 

"Because  you  don't  know  what  you're  punishing 
this  child  for,"  I  told  him  with  all  the  quietness  I 
could  command.  "And  because  you're  in  no  fit  con 
dition  to  do  it." 

"You  needn't  worry  about  my  condition,"  he  cried 


182  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

out — and  I  could  see  by  the  way  he  said  it  that  he 
was  still  blind  with  rage.  "Come  here,  you !"  he 
called  to  Dinkie. 

It  was  then  that  the  fatal  little  bell  clanged  some 
where  at  the  back  of  my  head,  the  bell  that  rings 
down  the  curtain  on  all  the  slowly  accumulated  civil 
ization  the  centuries  may  have  brought  to  us.  I  not 
only  faced  my  husband  with  a  snort  of  scorn,  but  I 
tightened  my  grip  on  the  child's  hand.  I  tightened 
my  grip  on  his  hand  and  backed  slowly  and  delib 
erately  away  until  I  came  to  the  door  of  my  sewing- 
room.  Then,  still  facing  my  husband,  I  opened  that 
door  and  said:  "Go  inside,  Dinkie."  I  could  not  see 
the  boy,  but  I  knew  that  he  had  done  as  I  told  him. 
So  I  promptly  slammed  the  door  shut  and  stood 
there  facing  the  gray-lipped  man  with  the  riding- 
quirt  in  his  hand.  He  took  two  slow  steps  toward 
me.  His  chin  was  thrust  out  in  a  way  that  made  me 
think  of  a  fighting-cock's  beak.  He  uad  not  shaved 
that  morning,  and  his  squared  jaw  looked  stubbled 
and  blue  and  ugly. 

"You  can't  pull  that  petticoat  stuff  this  time,"  he 
said  in  a  hard  and  throaty  tone  which  I  had  never 
heard  from  him  before.  "Get  out  of  my  way !" 

"You  will  not  beat  that  child!"      And   I  myself 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  186 

couldn't  have  made  a  very  pretty  picture  as  I  flung 
that  challenge  up  in  his  teeth. 

"Get  out  of  my  way,"  he  repeated.  He  did  not 
shout  it.  He  said  it  almost  quietly.  But  I  knew, 
even  before  he  reached  out  a  shaking  hand  to  thrust 
me  aside,  that  he  was  in  deadly  earnest,  that  nothing 
I  could  say  would  hold  him  back  or  turn  him  aside. 
And  it  was  then  that  my  eye  fell  on  the  big  Colt  in 
its  stained  leather  holster,  hanging  up  high  over  one 
corner  of  the  book-cabinet,  where  it  had  been  put 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  children. 

I  have  no  memory  of  giving  any  thought  to  the 
matter.  My  reaction  must  have  been  both  immediate 
and  automatic.  I  don't  think  I  even  intended  to  bunt 
my  husband  in  the  short-ribs  the  way  I  did,  for  the 
impact  of  rriy  body  half  twisted  him  about  and  sent 
him  staggering  back  several  steps.  All  I  know  is  that 
holster  and  belt  came  tumbling  down  as  I  sprang  and 
caught  at  the  Colt  handle.  And  I  was  back  at  the 
door  before  I  had  even  shaken  the  revolver  free.  I 
was  back  just  in  time  to  hear  my  husband  say,  rather 
foolishly,  for  the  third  time :  "Get  out  of  my  way !" 

"You  stay  back  there !"  I  called,  quite  as  foolishly, 
for  by  this  time  I  had  the  Colt  balanced  in  my  hand 
and  was  pointing  it  directly  at  his  body. 


184  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

He  stopped  short,  with  a  vacuous  look  in  his  eyes. 

"You  fool!"  he  said,  in  a  sort  of  strangled  whisper. 
But  it  was  my  face,  and  not  the  weapon,  that  he  was 
staring  at  all  the  while. 

"Stay  back !"  I  said  again,  with  my  eyes  fixed  on 
his. 

He  hesitated,  for  a  moment,  and  made  a  sound  that 
was  like  the  short  bark  of  a  laugh.  It  was  too  hard 
and  horrible,  though,  ever  to  be  taken  for  laughter. 
And  I  knew  that  he  was  not  going  to  do  what  I  had 
said. 

"Stay  back!"  I  warned  him  still  again.  But  he 
stepped  forward,  with  a  grim  sort  of  deliberation, 
with  his  challenging  gaze  locked  on  mine.  I  could 
hear  a  thousand  warning  voices,  somewhere  at  the 
back  of  my  brain,  and  at  the  same  time  I  could  hear 
a  thousand  singing  devils  in  my  blood  trying  to 
drown  out  those  voices.  I  could  see  my  husband's 
narrowed  eyes  slowly  widen,  slowly  open  like  the  gills 
of  a  dying  fish,  for  the  hate  that  he  must  have  seen 
on  my  face  obviously  arrested  him.  It  arrested  him, 
but  it  arrested  him  only  for  a  moment.  He  dropped 
his  eyes  to  the  Colt  in  my  hand.  Then  he  moved 
deliberately  forward  until  his  body  was  almost 
against  the  barrel-end.  I  must  have  known  what  it 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  185 

meant,  just  as  he  must  have  known  what  it  meant. 
It  was  his  final  challenge.  And  I  must  have  met  that 
challenge.  For,  without  quite  knowing  it,  I  shut  my 
eyes  and  pulled  the  trigger. 

There  had  been  something  awful,  I  know,  in  that 
momentary  silence.  And  there  was  something  awful 
in  the  sound  that  came  after  it,  though  it  was  not  the 
sound  my  subconscious  mind  was  waiting  for.  It 
was  distinct  enough  and  significant  enough,  heaven 
knows.  But  instead  of  the  explosion  of  a  shell  it  was 
the  sharp  snap  of  steel  against  steel. 

The  revolver  was  empty.  It  was  empty — had  been 
empty  for  weeks.  But  the  significant  fact  remained 
that  I  had  deliberately  pulled  the  trigger.  I  had 
stood  ready,  in  my  moment  of  madness,  to  kill  the 
man  that  I  lived  with.  .  .  . 

Had  a  ball  of  lead  gone  through  that  man's  body, 
I  don't  think  he  could  have  staggered  back  with  a 
more  startled  expression  on  his  face.  He  looked 
more  than  bewildered;  he  looked  vaguely  humiliated, 
oddly  and  wordlessly  affronted,  as  he  stood  leaning 
against  the  table-edge,  breathing  hard,  his  skin  a 
mottled  blue-white  to  the  very  lips.  He  made  an 
effort  to  speak,  but  no  sound  came  from  him.  For  a 
moment  the  dreadful  thought  raced  through  me  that 


186  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

I  had  indeed  shot  him,  that  in  some  mysterious  way 
he  was  mortally  hurt,  without  this  particular  bullet 
announcing  itself  as  bullets  usually  do.  I  looked  at 
the  revolver,  stupidly.  It  seemed  to  have  grown 
heavy,  as  heavy  as  a  cook-stove  in  my  hand. 

"You'd  do  that?"  whispered  my  husband,  very 
slowly,  with  a  stricken  light  in  his  eyes  which  I 
couldn't  quite  understand.  I  intended  to  put  the 
Colt  on  the  table.  But  something  must  have  been 
wrong  with  my  vision,  for  the  loathsome  thing  fell 
loathsomely  to  the  floor.  I  felt  sick  and  shaken  and 
a  horrible  misty  feeling  of  homelessness  settled  down 
about  me,  of  a  sudden,  for  I  remembered  how  closely 
I  had  skirted  the  black  gulf  of  murder. 

"Oh,  Dinky-Dunk!"  I  blubbered,  weakly,  as  I 
groped  toward  him.  He  must  have  thought  that  I 
was  going  to  fall,  for  he  put  out  his  arm  and  held  me 
up.  He  held  me  up,  but  there  wasn't  an  atom  of 
warmth  in  his  embrace.  He  held  me  up  about  the 
same  as  he'd  hold  up  an  open  wheat-sack  that  threat 
ened  to  tumble  over  on  his  granary  floor.  I  don't 
know  what  reaction  it  was  that  took  my  strength 
away  from  me,  but  I  clung  to  his  shoulders  and 
sobbed  there.  I  felt  as  alone  in  the  gray  wastes  of 
time  as  one  of  Gershom's  lost  stars.  And  I  knew  that 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  187 

my  Dinky-Dunk  would  never  bend  down  now  and 
whisper  into  my  ear  any  word  of  comfort,  any  word 
of  forgiveness.  For,  however  things  may  have  been 
at  the  first,  I  was  the  one  who  was  now  so  hopelessly 
in  the  wrong,  /  was  the  big  offender.  And  that 
knowledge  only  added  to  my  misery  as  I  stood  there 
clinging  to  my  husband's  shoulders  and  blubbering 
"Oh,  Dinky-Dunk!" 

It  must  have  grown  distasteful  to  him,  my  foolish 
hanging  on  to  him  as  though  he  were  a  hitching-post, 
for  he  finally  said  in  a  remote  voice:  "I  guess  we've 
had  about  enough  of  this."  He  led  me  rather  cere 
moniously  to  a  chair,  and  slowly  let  me  down  in  it. 
Then  he  crossed  over  to  the  old  leather  holster  and 
picked  it  up,  and  stooped  for  the  revolver,  and 
pushed  it  down  in  the  holster  and  buckled  the  cover- 
flap  and  tossed  the  whole  thing  up  to  the  top  of  the 
book-cabinet  again.  Then,  without  speaking  to  me, 
he  walked  slowly  out  of  the  room. 

I  was  tempted  to  call  him  back,  but  I  knew,  on 
second  thought,  that  it  would  be  no  use.  I  merely 
sat  there,  staring  ahead  of  me.  Then  I  shut  my  eves 
and  tried  to  think.  I  don't  know  why,  but  I  was 
thinking  about  the  bigness  of  Betelgeuse,  which  was 
twenty-seven  million  times  as  big  as  our  sun  and 


188  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

which  was  going  on  through  its  millions  of  miles  of 
space  without  knowing  anything  about  Chaddie 
McKail  and  what  had  happened  to  her  that  morning. 
I  was  wondering  if  there  were  worlds  between -me  and 
Betelgeuse  with  women  on  them,  with  women  as  alone 
as  I  was,  when  I  felt  a  pair  of  small  arms  tighten 
about  my  knees  and  an  adoring  small  voice  whispered 
"Mummsy !"  And  I  forgot  about  Betelgeuse.  For 
it  was  my  Dinkie  there,  with  his  little  rough  hand 
reaching  hungrily  for  mine.  .  .  . 

Minty  has  been  removed  from  Casa  Grande.  I 
took  him  over  to  the  Teetzel  ranch  in  the  car,  and 
young  Dode  Teetzel  is  to  get  a  dollar  a  week  for 
looking  after  him  and  feeding  him.  Only  Elmer  and 
I  know  of  his  whereabouts.  And  once  a  week  the 
boy  can  canter  over  on  Buntie  and  keep  in  touch  with 
his  pup. 

We  have  a  tacit  understanding  that  the  occur 
rences  of  yesterday  morning  are  a  closed  chapter,  are 
not  to  be  referred  to  by  word  or  deed.  Duncan  him 
self  found  it  necessary  to  team  in  to  Buckhorn  and 
left  word  with  Struthers  that  he  would  stay  in  town 
over  night.  The  call  for  the  Buckhorn  trip  was,  of 
course,  a  polite  fabrication,  an  expedient  pax  in  hello 
to  permit  the  dust  of  battle  to  settle  a  little  about 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  189 

this  troubled  house  of  McKail.  All  day  to-day  I 
have  felt  rather  languid.  I  suppose  it's  the  lethargy 
which  naturally  follows  after  all  violence.  Any 
respectable  woman,  I  used  to  think,  could  keep  a 
dead-line  in  her  soul,  beyond  which  the  impulses  of 
evil  dare  not  venture.  But  I  must  have  been  wrong. 
.  .  .  All  week  I've  been  looking  for  a  letter  from 
Peter  Ketley.  But  for  once  in  his  life  he  seems  to 
have  forgotten  us. 


Sunday  the  Twentieth 

I'VE  been  wondering  to-day  just  what  I'd  do  if  I 
had  to  earn  my  own  living.  I  could  run  a  ranch,  I 
suppose,  if  I  still  had  one,  but  two  or  three  years  of 
such  work  would  see  me  a  hatchet-faced  old  terma 
gant  with  fallen  arches  and  a  prairie-squint.  Or  I 
could  raise  chickens  and  peddle  dated  eggs  in  a 
flivver — and  fresco  hen-coops  with  whitewash  until 
the  trap-nest  of  time  swallowed  me  up  in  oblivion. 
Or  I  could  take  a  rural  school  somewhere  and  teach 
the  three  R's  to  little  Slovenes  and  Frisians  and 
French-Canadians  even  more  urgently  in  need  of 
soap  and  water.  Or  perhaps  I  could  be  housekeeper 
for  one  of  our  new  beef-kings  in  his  new  Queen-Anne 
Norman-Georgian  Venetian  palace  of  Alberta  sand- 
stone  with  tesselated  towers  and  bungalow  sleeping- 
porches.  Or  I  might  even  peddle  magazines,  or  start 
a  little  bakery  in  one  of  the  little  board-fronted  shops 
of  Buckhorn,  or  take  in  plain  sewing  and  dispose  of 
home-made  preserves  to  the  elite  of  the  community. 

190 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  191 

But  each  and  all  of  them  would  be  mere  gestures 
of  defeat.  I'm  of  no  value  to  the  world.  There  was  a 
time  when  I  regarded  myself  as  quite  a  Some 
body,  and  prided  myself  on  having  an  idea  or 
two.  Didn't  Percy  even  once  denominate  me  as 
"a  window-dresser"?  There  was  a  time  when  I 
didn't  have  to  wait  to  see  if  the  pearl-handled  knife 
was  the  one  intended  for  the  fish-course,  and  I  could 
walk  across  a  waxed  floor  without  breaking  my  neck 
and  do  a  bit  of  shopping  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix  with 
out  being  taken  for  a  tourist.  But  that  was  a  long, 
long  time  ago.  And  life  during  the  last  few  years  has 
both  humbled  me  and  taught  me  my  limitations.  I'm 
a  house-wife,  now,  and  nothing  more — and  not  even 
a  successful  house-wife.  I've  let  everything  fall  away 
except  the  thought  of  my  home  and  my  family.  And 
now  I  find  that  the  basket  into  which  I  so  carefully 
packed  all  my  eggs  hasn't  even  a  bottom  to  it. 

But  I've  no  intention  of  repining.  Heaven  knows 
I've  never  wanted  to  sit  on  the  Mourner's  Bench. 
I've  never  tried  to  pull  a  sour  mug,  as  Dinky-Dunk 
once  inelegantly  expressed  it.  I  love  life  and  the  joy 
of  life,  and  I  want  all  of  it  I  can  get.  I  believe  in 
laughter,  and  I've  a  weakness  for  men  and  women  who 
can  sing  as  they  work.  But  I've  blundered  into  a 


192  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

black  frost,  and  even  though  there  was  something  to 
sing  about,  there's  scarcely  a  blue-bird  left  to  do  the 
singing.  But  sometime,  somewhere,  there'll  be  an  end 
to  that  silence.  The  blight  will  pass,  and  I'll  break 
out  again.  I  know  it.  I  don't  intend  to  be  held 
down.  I  can't  be  held  down.  I  haven't  the  remotest 
idea  of  how  it's  going  to  happen,  but  I'm  going  to 
love  life  again,  and  be  happy,  and  carol  out  like  a 
meadow-lark  on  a  blue  and  breezy  April  morning. 
It  may  not  come  to-morrow,  and  it  may  not  come  the 
next  day.  But  it's  going  to  come.  And  knowing  it's 
going  to  come,  I  can  afford  to  sit  tight,  and  abide 
my  time.  .  .  . 

I've  just  had  a  letter  from  Uncle  Chandler,  enclos 
ing  snap-shots  of  the  place  he's  bought  in  New 
Jersey.  It  looks  very  palatial  and  settled  and  Old- 
Worldish,  shaded  and  shadowed  with  trees  and  soft 
ened  with  herbage,  dignified  by  the  hand  of  time.  It 
reminds  me  how  many  and  many  a  long  year  will  hare 
to  go  by  before  our  bald  young  prairie  can  be  tamed 
and  petted  into  a  homeyness  like  that.  Uncle 
Cha/ndler  has  rather  startled  me  by  suggesting  that 
we  send  Elmer  through  to  him,  to  go  to  school  in  the 
East.  He  says  the  boy  can  attend  Montclair  Acad 
emy,  that  he  can  be  taken  there  and  called  for  every 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  193 

day  by  faithful  old  Fisher,  in  the  cabriolet,  and  that 
on  Sunday  he  can  be  toted  regularly  to  St.  Luke's 
Episcopal  Church,  and  occasionally  go  into  New 
York  for  some  of  the  better  concerts,  and  even  have 
a  governess  of  his  own,  if  he'd  care  for  it.  And  in 
case  I  should  be  worrying  about  his  welfare  Uncle 
Chandler  would  send  me  a  weekly  night-letter  "de 
scribing  the  condition  and  the  activities  of  the  child," 
as  the  letter  expresses  it.  It  sounds  very  appealing, 
but  every  time  I  try  to  think  it  over  my  heart  goes 
down  like  a  dab-chick.  My  Dinkie  is  such  a  little 
fellow.  And  he's  my  first-born,  my  man-child,  and 
he  means  so  much  in  my  life.  Yet  he  and  his  father 
are  not  getting  along  very  well  together.  It  would 
be  better,  in  many  respects,  if  the  boy  could  get  away 
for  a  while,  until  the  raw  edges  healed  over  again. 
It  would  be  better  for  both  of  them.  But  there's  one 
thing  that  would  happen :  he  would  grow  away  from 
his  mother.  He'd  come  back  to  me  a  stranger.  He'd 
come  back  a  little  ashamed  of  his  shabby  prairie 
mater,  with  her  ten-years-old  style  of  hair-dressing 
and  her  moss-grown  ideas  of  things  and  her  bald- 
looking  prairie  home  with  no  repose  and  no  dignify 
ing  background  and  neither  a  private  gym  nor  a 
butler  to  wheel  in  the  cinnamon-toast.  He'd  be  hav- 


194  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

ing  all  those  things,  under  Uncle  Chandler's  roof: 
he'd  get  used  to  them  and  he'd  expect  them. 

But  there's  one  thing  he  wouldn't  and  couldn't 
have.  He  wouldn't  have  his  mother.  And  no  one  can 
take  a  mother's  place,  with  a  boy  like  that.  No  one 
could  understand  him,  and  make  allowances  for  him, 
and  explain  things  to  him,  as  his  own  mother  could. 
I've  been  thinking  about  that,  all  afternoon  as  I 
ironed  his  waists  and  his  blue  flannellet  pajamas 
with  frogs  on  like  his  dad's.  And  I've  been  thinking 
of  it  all  evening  as  I  patched  his  brown  corduroy 
knickers  and  darned  his  little  stockings  and  balled 
them  up  in  a  neat  little  row.  I  tried  to  picture 
myself  as  packing  them  away  in  a  trunk,  and  putting 
in  beside  them  all  the  clothes  he  would  need,  and  the 
books  that  he  could  never  get  along  without,  and  the 
childish  little  treasures  he'd  have  to  carry  away  to 
his  new  home.  But  it  was  too  much  for  me.  There 
was  one  thing,  I  began  to  see,  which  could  never, 
never  happen.  I  could  never  willingly  be  parted  from 
my  Dinkie.  I  could  think  of  nothing  to  pay  me  up 
for  losing  him.  And  he  needed  me  as  I  needed  him. 
For  good  or  bad,  we'd  have  to  stick  together.  Mother 
and  son,  together  in  some  way  we'd  have  to  sink  or 
swim! 


Wednesday  the  Thirtieth 

THE  tension  has  been  relieved  by  Dinky-Dunk 
going  off  to  Calgary.  Along  with  him  he  has  taken 
a  rather  formidable  amount  of  his  personal  belong 
ings.  But  he  explains  this  by  stating  that  business 
will  keep  him  in  the  city  for  at  least  six  or  seven 
weeks.  He  has  been  talking  a  good  deal  about  the 
Barcona  coal-mine  of  late,  and  the  last  night  he  was 
with  us  he  talked  to  Gershom  for  an  hour  and  more 
about  the  advantages  of  those  newer  mines  over  the 
Drumheller.  The  newer  field  has  a  solid  slate  roof 
which  makes  drifting  safe  and  easy,  a  finer  type  of 
coal,  and  a  chance  for  big  money  once  the  railway 
runs  in  its  spur  and  the  officials  wake  up  to  the 
importance  of  giving  them  the  cars  they  need.  The 
whole  country,  Dinky-Dunk  claims,  is  underlaid  with 
coal,  and  our  province  alone  is  estimated  to  contain 
almost  seventeen  per  cent,  of  the  world's  known  sup 
ply.  And  my  lord  and  master  expressed  the  intention 
of  being  in  on  the  clean-up. 

I  don't  know  how  much  of  this  was  intended  for 
195 


196  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

my  ears.  But  it  served  to  disquiet  me,  for  reasons 
I  couldn't  quite  discern.  And  the  same  vague  depres 
sion  crept  over  me  when  Dinky-Dunk  took  his 
departure.  I  kept  up  my  air  of  blitheness,  it  is  true, 
to  the  last  moment,  and  was  as  casual  as  you  please 
in  helping  Duncan  to  pack  and  reminding  him  to  put 
his  shaving-things  in  his  bag  and  making  sure  the 
last  button  was  on  his  pajamas.  I  kissed  him 
good-by,  as  a  dutiful  wife  ought,  and  held  Pauline 
Augusta  up  in  the  doorway  so  that  she  might  attempt 
a  last-minute  hand-waving  at  her  daddy. 

But  I  slumped,  once  it  was  all  over.  I  felt  mys 
teriously  alone  in  an  indifferent  big  world  with  the 
rime  of  winter  creeping  along  its  edges.  Even  Ger- 
shom,  after  the  children  had  had  their  lesson,  became 
conscious  of  my  preoccupation  and  went  so  far  as  to 
ask  if  I  wasn't  feeling  well. 

I  smilingly  assured  him  that  there  was  nothing 
much  wrong  with  me. 

"Lerne  zu  leiden  ohne  zu  klagen!"  as  the  dying 
Frederick  said  to  a  singularly  foolish  son. 

"But  you're  upset?"  persisted  Gershom,  with  his 
valorous  brand  of  timidity  that  so  often  reminds  me 
of  a  robin  defending  her  eggs. 

"No,  it's  not  that,"  I  said  with  a  shake  of  the  head. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  197 

"It's  only  that  I'm — I'm  a  trifle  too  chilly  to  be  com 
fortable." 

And  the  foolish  youth,  at  that,  straightway  fell  to 
stoking  the  fire.  I  had  to  laugh  a  little.  And  that 
made  him  study  me  with  solemn  eyes. 

"Just  think,  Gershom,"  I  said  as  I  gathered  up 
my  sewing,  "my  heart  is  perishing  of  cold  in  a  prov 
ince  which  is  estimated  to  contain  almost  seventeen 
per  cent,  of  the  world's  known  coal  supply !" 

And  that,  apparently,  left  him  with  something  to 
think  about  as  I  made  my  way  off  to  bed  .  .  .  It's 
hard  to  write  coherently,  I  find,  when  you're  not  liv 
ing  coherently  .  .  . 

Syd  Woodward,  of  Buckhorn,  having  learned  that 
I  can  drive  a  tractor,  has  asked  me  if  I'll  take  part  in 
the  plowing-match  to-morrow.  And  I've  given  my 
promise  to  show  Mere  Man  what  a  woman  can  do  in 
the  matter  of  turning  a  mile-long  furrow.  I  feel 
rather  audacious  over  it  all.  And  I'm  glad  to  inject 
a  little  excitement  into  life  .  .  .  I'm  saving  up  for 
a  new  sewing-machine  .  .  .  Tarzanette  has  got 
rather  badly  cut  up  in  some  of  our  barb-wire  fencing. 


Friday  the  Fifteenth 

THE  plowing-match  was  good  fun,  and  I  enjoyed  it 
even  more  than  I  had  expected.  The  men  "kidded" 
me  a  good  deal,  and  gave  me  a  cheer  at  the  end  (I 
don't  quite  know  whether  it  was  for  my  work  or  my 
costume)  and  I  had  to  pose  for  photographs,  and  a 
moving-picture  man  even  followed  me  about  for  a 
round,  shooting  me  as  I  turned  my  prairie  stubble 
upside  down.  But  the  excitement  of  the  plowing- 
match  has  been  eclipsed  by  a  bit  of  news  which  has 
rather  taken  my  breath  away.  It  is  Peter  Ketley  who 
has  bought  the  Harris  Ranch. 


198 


Saturday  the  Twenty-Third 

THE  rains  have  brought  mushrooms,  slathers  of 
mushrooms,  and  I  joy  in  gathering  them. 

Yesterday  afternoon  I  rode  past  the  Harris 
Ranch.  The  old  place  brought  back  a  confusion  of 
memories.  But  I  was  most  disturbed  by  the  signs 
of  building  going  on  there.  It  seems  to  mean  a  new 
shack  on  Alabama  Ranch.  And  a  new  shack  of  very 
considerable  dimensions.  I've  been  wondering  what 
this  implies.  I  don't  know  whether  to  be  elated  or 
depressed.  And  what  business  is  it,  after  all,  of 
mine  ? 

My  Dinkie — I  have  altogether  given  up  trying  to 
call  my  Dinkie  anything  but  Dinkie — came  home  two 
evenings  ago  with  a  discolored  eye  and  a  distinct  air 
of  silence.  Gershom,  too,  seemed  equally  reticent. 
So  I  set  about  discreetly  third-degreeing  Poppsy, 
who  finally  acknowledged,  with  awe  in  her  voice,  that 
Dinkie  had  been  in  a  fight. 

It  was,  according  to  my  petticoated  Herodotus,  a 
truly  terrible  fight.  Noses  got  bloodied,  and  no  one 

199 


200  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

could  make  the  fighters  stop.  But  Dinkie  was  un 
questionably  the  conqueror.  Yet,  oddly  enough,  I 
am  informed  that  he  cried  all  through  the  combat. 
He  was  a  crying  fighter.  And  he  had  his  fight  with 
Climmie  O'Lone — trust  the  Irish  to  look  for  trouble! 
— who  seems  to  have  been  accepted  as  the  ring-master 
of  his  younger  clan.  Their  differences  arose  out  of 
the  accusation  that  Dinkie,  my  bashful  little  Dinkie, 
had  been  forcing  his  unwelcomed  attention  on  one 
Doreen  O'Lone,  Climmie's  younger  sister.  That's 
absurd,  of  course.  And  Dinkie  must  have  realized  it. 
He  didn't  want  to  fight,  acknowledged  Poppsy,  from 
the  first.  He  even  cried  over  it.  And  Doreen  also 
cried.  And  Poppsy  herself  joined  in. 

I  fancy  it  was  a  truly  Homeric  struggle,  for  it 
seems  to  have  lasted  for  round  after  round.  It 
lasted,  I  have  been  able  to  gather,  until  Climmie  was 
worsted  and  down  on  his  back  crying  "Enough!" 
Which  Poppsy  reports  Dinkie  made  him  say  three 
times,  until  Doreen  nodded  and  said  she'd  heard. 
But  my  young  son,  apparently,  is  one  of  those  crying 
fighters,  who  are  reckoned,  if  I  remember  right,  as 
the  worst  breed  of  belligerents! 

I  have  decided  not  to  tell  Dinkie  what  I  know. 
But  I'm  rather  anxious  to  get  a  glimpse  of  this  young 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  201 

Mistress  Doreen,  for  whom  lances  are  already  being 
shattered  in  the  lists  of  youth.  The  O'Lones  regard 
themselves  as  the  landed  aristocracy  of  the  Elk-trail 
District.  And  Doreen  O'Lone  impresses  me  as  a 
very  musical  appellative.  Yet  I  prefer  to  keep  my 
kin  free  from  all  entangling  alliances,  even  though 
they  have  to  do  with  a  cattle-king's  offspring.  .  .  . 
I  had  a  short  letter  from  Dinky-Dunk  to-day, 
asking  me  to  send  on  a  package  of  papers  which  he 
had  left  in  a  pigeon-hole  of  his  desk  here.  It  was  a 
depressingly  non-committal  little  note,  without  a 
glimmer  of  warmth  between  the  lines.  I'm  afraid 
there's  a  certain  ugly  truth  which  will  have  to  be 
faced  some  day.  But  I  intend  to  stick  to  the  ship 
as  long  as  the  ship  can  keep  afloat.  I  am  so  essen 
tially  a  family  woman  that  I  can't  conceive  of  life 
without  its  home  circle.  Home,  however,  is  where  the 
heart  is.  And  it  seems  to  take  more  than  one  heart 
to  keep  it  going.  I  keep  reminding  myself  that  I 
have  my  children  at  the  same  time  that  I  keep  asking 
myself  why  my  children  are  not  enough,  why  they 
can't  seem  to  fill  my  cup  of  contentment  as  they 
ought.  Now  that  their  father  is  so  much  away,  a 
great  deal  of  their  training  is  falling  on  my  shoulders. 
And  I  must,  in  some  way,  be  a  model  to  them.  So 


202  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

I'll  continue  to  show  them  what  a  Penelope  I  can  be. 
Perhaps,  after  all,  they  will  prove  our  salvation.  For 
our  offspring  ought  to  be  the  snow-fences  along  the 
wind-harried  rails  of  matrimony.  They  should  pre 
vent  drifting  along  the  line,  and  from  terminal  to 
lonely  terminal  should  keep  traffic  open  ...  I  have 
to-night  induced  Poppsy  to  write  a  long  and  affec 
tionate  letter  to  her  pater,  telling  him  all  the  news  of 
Casa  Grande.  Perhaps  it  will  awaken  a  little  pang 
in  the  breast  of  her  absent  parent. 


Monday  the  Twenty-Fifth 

I  HAVE  aroused  the  ire  of  the  Dour  Man.  He  has 
sent  me  a  message  strongly  disapproving  of  my  con 
duct.  He  even  claims  that  I've  humiliated  him.  I 
never  dreamed,  when  that  movie-man  with  the  camera 
followed  me  about  at  the  plowing-match,  that  my 
husband  would  wander  into  a  Calgary  picture-house 
and  behold  his  wife  in  driving  gauntlets  and  Stetson 
mounted  on  a  tractor  and  twiddling  her  fingers  at  the 
camera-operator,  just  to  show  how  much  at  home  she 
felt !  Dinky-Dunk  must  have  experienced  a  distinctly 
new  thrill  when  he  saw  his  own  wife  come  riding 
through  that  pictorial  news  weekly.  He  would  have 
preferred  not  recognizing  me,  I  suppose.  But  there 
I  was,  duly  named  and  labeled — and  hence  the  pon 
derous  little  note  of  disapproval. 

But  I'm  not  going  to  let  Duncan  start  a  quarrel 
over  trivialities  like  this.  I  intend  to  sit  tight. 
There'd  be  little  use  in  argument,  anyway,  for  Dun 
can  would  only  ignore  me  as  the  predatory  tom-cat 
ignores  the  foolishly  scolding  robin.  I'm  going  to  be 

203 


204  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

a  regular  mallard,  and  stick  to  these  home  regions 
until  the  ice  forms.  And  our  most  mountainous 
troubles,  after  all,  can't  quite  survive  being  exterior- 
ated  through  the  ink-well.  It  relieves  me  to  write 
about  them.  But  I  wish  I  had  a  woman  of  my  own 
age  to  talk  to.  I  get  a  bit  lonely,  now  that  winter 
is  slipping  down  out  of  the  North  again.  And  I 
find  that  I'm  not  so  companionable  as  I  ought  to  be. 
It  comes  home  to  me,  now  and  then,  how  far  away 
from  the  world  we  are,  how  remote  from  everything 
that  counts.  The  tragedy  of  life  with  Chaddie 
McKail,  I  suppose,  is  that  she's  let  existence  narrow 
down  to  just  one  thing,  to  her  family.  Other  women 
seem  to  have  substitutes.  But  I've  about  forgotten 
how  to  be  a  social  animal.  I  seem  to  grow  as  segre 
gative  as  the  timber-wolf.  There's  nothing  for  me 
in  the  woman's  club  life  one  gets  out  here.  I  can't 
force  myself  into  church  work,  and  the  rural  reading- 
club  is  something  beyond  me.  I  simply  couldn't 
endure  those  Women's  Institute  meetings  which  open 
with  a  hymn  and  end  up  with  sponge-cake  and  green 
tea,  after  a  platitudinous  paper  on  the  Beauty  of 
Prairie  Life.  It  has  its  beauties,  God  knows,  or  we'd 
all  go  mad.  We  women,  in  this  brand-new  land,  try 
to  bolster  ourselves  up  with  the  belief  that  we  have 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  205 

greatnesses  which  the  rest  of  the  world  must  get 
along  without.  But  that  is  only  the  flaunting  of 
La  Panache,  the  feather  of  courage  in  our  cap  of 
discouragement.  There  is  so  much,  so  much,  we  are 
denied !  So  much  we  must  do  without !  So  much  we 
must  see  go  to  others !  So  much  we  must  never  even 
hope  for !  Oh,  pioneers,  great  you  are  and  great  you 
must  be,  to  endure  what  you  have  endured!  You 
must  be  strong  in  your  hours  of  secret  questioning 
and  you  must  be  strong  in  your  quest  for  consolation. 
If  nothing  else,  you  must  at  least  be  strong.  And 
these  western  men  of  ours  should  all  be  strong  men, 
should  all  be  great  men,  because  they  must  have  been 
the  children  of  great  mothers.  A  prairie  mother 
has  to  be  a  great  woman.  She  must  be  great  to 
survive,  to  endure,  to  leave  her  progeny  behind  her. 
I've  heard  the  Wise  Men  talk  about  nature  looking 
after  her  own.  I've  heard  sentimentalists  sing  about 
the  strength  that  lies  in  the  soil.  But,  oh,  pioneers, 
you  know  what  you  know!  In  your  secret  heart  of 
hearts  you  remember  the  lonely  hours,  the  lonely 
years,  the  lonely  graves !  For  in  the  matter  of  infant 
mortality  alone,  prairie  life  shows  a  record  shocking 
to  read.  We  are  making  that  better,  it  is  true,  with 
our  district  nursing  and  our  motherhood  clubs  and 


206  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

our  rural  phones  and  our  organized  letting  in  of 
light  and  passing  on  of  knowledge.  We  are  not  so 
overburdened  as  those  nobler  women  who  went  before 
us.  But,  oh,  pioneers  along  these  lonely  northern 
trails,  I  salute  you  and  honor  you  for  your  courage ! 
Your  greatness  will  never  be  known.  It  will  be  seen 
only  in  the  great  country  which  you  gave  up  your 
lives  to  bring  to  birth! 


• 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-Seventh 

WHAT  weather-cocks  we  are !  My  blue  Monday  is 
over  and  done  with,  this  is  a  crystalline  winter  day 
with  all  the  earth  at  peace  with  itself,  and  I've  just 
had  a  letter  from  Peter  asking  if  I  could  take  care 
of  his  sister's  girl,  Susie  Mumford,  until  after  Christ 
mas.  The  Mumfords,  it  seems,  are  going  through 
the  divorce-mill,  and  Susie's  mother  is  anxious  that 
her  one  and  only  child  should  be  afar  from  the  scene 
when  the  grist  of  liberty  is  a-grinding. 

I  know  nothing  of  Susie  except  what  Peter  has  told 
me,  that  she  is  not  yet  nineteen,  that  she  is  intelligent, 
but  obstreperous,  and  much  wiser  than  she  pretends 
to  be,  that  the  machinery  of  life  has  always  run  much 
too  smoothly  about  her  for  her  own  good,  and  that  a 
couple  of  months  of  prairie  life  might  be  the  means 
of  introducing  her  to  her  own  soul. 

That's  all  I  know  of  Susie,  but  I  shall  welcome  her 
to  Casa  Grande.  I'll  be  glad  to  see  a  city  girl  again, 
to  talk  over  face-creams  and  the  Follies  and  Tchai- 
kowsky  and  brassieres  and  Strindberg  with.  And 

207 


208  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

I'll  be  glad  to  do  a  little  toward  repaying  big-hearted 
old  Peter  for  all  his  kindnesses  of  the  past.  Susie 
may  be  both  sophisticated  and  intractable,  but  I 
await  her  with  joy.  She  seems  almost  the  answer  to 
my  one  big  want. 

But  Casa  Grande,  I  have  been  realizing,  will  have 
to  be  refurbished  for  its  coming  guest.  We  have 
grown  a  bit  shoddy  about  the  edges  here.  It's  hard 
to  keep  a  house  spick  and  span,  with  two  active- 
bodied  children  running  about  it.  And  my  heart,  I 
suppose,  has  not  been  in  that  work  of  late.  But  I've 
been  on  a  tour  of  inspection,  and  I  realize  it's  time  to 
reform.  So  Struthers  and  I  are  about  to  doll  up 
these  dilapidated  quarters  of  ours.  And  I  intend 
to  have  my  dolorously  neglected  Guest  Room  (for 
such  I  used  to  call  it)  done  over  before  the  arrival 
of  Susie. .  .  . 

I  rode  over  to  the  Teetzels'  this  afternoon,  to 
explain  about  our  cattle  getting  through  on  their 
land.  It  was  the  road-workers  who  broke  down  the 
Teetzel  fence,  to  squat  on  a  coulee-corner  for  their 
camp.  And  they  hadn't  the  decency  to  restore  what 
they  had  wrecked.  So  Bud  Teetzel  and  I  rode  seven 
miles  up  the  new  turn-pike  and  overtook  those  road- 
workers  and  I  harangued  their  foreman  for  a  full 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  209 

fifteen  minutes.  But  it  made  little  impression  on 
him.  He  merely  grinned  and  stared  at  me  with  a 
sort  of  insolent  admiration  on  his  face.  And  when  I 
had  finished  he  audibly  remarked  to  one  of  his  team 
sters  that  I  made  a  fine  figure  of  a  woman  on  horse 
back. 

Bud  says  they're  thinking  of  selling  out  if  they  can 
get  their  price.  The  old  folks  want  to  move  to  Vic 
toria,  and  Bud  and  his  brother  have  a  hankering  to 
try  their  luck  up  in  the  Peace  River  District.  I 
asked  Bud  if  he  wouldn't  rather  settle  down  in  one 
of  the  big  cities.  He  merely  laughed  at;  me.  "No 
thank  you,  lady !  This  old  prair-ee  is  comp'ny 
enough  for  me !"  he  said  as  he  loped,  brown  as  a  nut, 
along  the  trail  as  tawny  as  a  lion's  mane,  with  a  sky 
of  steel-cold  blue  smiling  down  on  his  lopsided  old 
sombrero.  I  studied  him  with  a  less  impersonal  eye. 
He  was  a  handsome  and  husky  young  giant,  with  the 
joy  of  life  still  frankly  imprinted  on  his  face. 

"Bud,"  I  said  as  I  loped  along  beside  him,  "why 
haven't  you  ever  married?" 

That  made  him  laugh  again.  Then  he  turned 
russet  as  he  showed  me  the  white  of  an  eye. 

"All  the  peaches  seemed  picked,  in  this  district," 
he  found  the  courage  to  proclaim. 


210  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

This  made  me  trot  out  the  old  platitude  about  the 
fish  in  the  sea  being  as  good  as  any  ever  caught — 
and  there  really  ought  to  be  an  excise  tax  on  plati 
tudes,  for  being  addicted  to  them  is  quite  as  bad  as 
being  addicted  to  alcohol,  and  quite  as  benumbing  to 
the  brain. 

But  Bud,  with  his  next  speech,  brought  me  up 
short. 

"Say,  lady,  if  you  was  still  in  the  runnin'  I'd  give 
'em  a  race  that'd  make  a  coyote  look  like  a  caterpillar 
on  crutches !" 

He  said  it  solemnly,  and  his  solemnity  kept  it 
respectful.  But  it  was  my  turn  to  laugh.  And 
ridiculous  as  it  may  sound,  this  doesn't  impress  me  as 
such  a  dark  world  as  I  had  imagined!  A  woman, 
after  all,  is  a  good  deal  like  mother  earth:  each  has 
to  be  cultivated  a  little  to  keep  it  mellow. 

.  .  .  Where  the  Female  is,  there  also  is  the  Unex 
pected.  For  when  I  got  home  I  found  that  my 
decorous  Poppsy,  my  irreproachable  Poppsy,  had 
succumbed  before  the  temptation  to  investigate 
my  new  sewing-machine.  And  once  having  nibbled 
at  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  she  went 
rampaging  through  the  whole  garden.  She  made 
a  stubborn  effort  to  exhaust  the  possibilities  of 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

all  the  little  hemmers,  and  tried  the  shirrer  and 
the  five-stitch  ruffler,  and  obviously  had  a  fling 
at  the  binder  and  a  turn  at  the  tucker.  What 
she  did  to  the  tension-spring  heaven  only  knows. 
And  my  brand-new  machine  is  on  the  blink.  And  my 
meek-eyed  little  Poppsy  isn't  as  impeccable  as  the 
world  about  her  imagined ! 


Wednesday  the  Third 

SUSIE  MUMFORD  arrived  yesterday.  The  weather, 
heaven  be  thanked,  was  perfect,  an  opal  day  with  the 
earth  as  fresh-smelling  as  Poppsy  just  out  of  her 
bath.  There  was  just  enough  chill  in  the  air  to  make 
one's  blood  tingle  and  just  enough  warmth  in  the 
sunlight  to  make  it  feel  like  a  benediction.  Whin- 
stane  Sandy,  in  fact,  avers  that  we're  in  for  a  spell 
of  Indian  Summer. 

I  motored  in  to  Buckhorn  and  met  Susie,  who 
wasn't  in  the  least  what  I  expected.  I  was  looking 
for  a  high-spirited  and  insolent-eyed  young  lady 
who'd  probably  be  traveling  with  a  French  maid  and 
a  van-load  of  trunks,  after  the  manner  of  Lady 
Alicia.  But  the  Susie  I  met  was  a  tired  and  listless 
and  rather  white-faced  girl  who  reminds  me  just 
enough  of  her  Uncle  Peter  to  make  me  like  her.  The 
poor  child  knows  next  to  nothing  of  the  continent  on 
which  she  was  born,  and  the  immensity  of  our  West 
has  rather  appalled  her.  She  told  me,  driving  home, 
that  she  had  never  before  been  this  side  of  the  Adiron- 

212 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

dacks.  Yet  she  has  crossed  the  Atlantic  eight  times 
and  knows  western  Europe  about  as  well  as  she  knows 
Long  Island  itself.  There  is  a  matter-of-factness 
about  Susie  which  makes  her  easy  to  get  along  with. 
Poppsy  took  to  her  at  once  and  was  a  garrulous  and 
happy  witness  of  Susie's  unpacking.  Dinkie,  on  the 
other  hand,  developed  an  altogether  unlooked-for 
shyness  and  turned  red  when  Susie  kissed  him.  There 
was  no  melting  of  the  ice  until  the  strange  lady  pro 
duced  a  very  wonderful  toy  air-ship,  which  you  wind 
up  and  which  soars  right  over  the  haystacks,  if  you 
start  it  right.  This  was  a  present  which  Peter  sent 
out.  Dinkie,  in  fact,  spent  most  of  his  spare  time 
last  night  writing  a  letter  to  his  Uncle  Peter,  a  letter 
which  he  intimated  he  had  no  wish  for  the  rest  of  the 
family  to  read.  He  was  willing  to  acknowledge,  this 
morning,  that  since  he  and  Susie  both  had  the  same 
Uncle  Peter,  they  really  ought  to  be  cousins.  .  .  . 
Susie  has  not  been  sleeping  well,  and  for  all  her 
weariness  last  night  had  to  take  five  grains  of  veronal 
before  she  could  settle  down.  The  result  is  that  she 
looks  whiter  than  ever  this  morning  and  ate  very 
little  of  Struthers'  really  splendiferous  breakfast. 
But  she  made  a  valorous  enough  effort  to  be  blithe 
and  has  rambled  about  Casa  Grande  with  the  febrile, 


quick  curiosity  of  a  young  setter,  making  friends 
with  the  animals  and  for  the  first  time  in  her  life 
picking  an  egg  out  of  a  nest.  I  was  afraid,  at  first, 
that  she  was  going  to  complain  about  the  quietness 
of  existence  out  here,  for  our  pace  must  seem  a  slow 
one,  after  New  York.  But  Susie  says  the  one  thing 
she  wants  is  peace.  It's  not  often  a  girl  not  yet  out 
of  her  teens  makes  any  such  qualified  demand  on 
life.  I  can't  help  feeling  that  the  break-up  of  her 
family  must  be  depressing  her  more  than  she  pre 
tends.  She  speaks  about  it  in  a  half-joking  way, 
however,  and  said  this  morning:  "Dad  certainly  de 
serves  a  little  freedom !"  We  sat  for  an  hour  at  the 
breakfast-table,  pow-wowing  about  everything  under 
the  blessed  sun. 

In  some  ways  Susie  is  a  very  mature  woman,  for 
nineteen  and  three-quarters.  She  is  also  an  excep 
tionally  companionable  one.  She  has  a  sort  of  lapis- 
lazuli  eye  with  paler  streaks  in  the  iris,  like  banded 
agate.  It  is  a  brooding  eye,  with  a  great  deal  of 
beauty  in  it.  And  she  has  a  magnolia-white  skin 
which  one  doesn't  often  see  on  the  prairie.  It's  not 
the  sort  of  skin,  in  fact,  which  could  last  very  long 
on  the  open  range.  It's  the  sort  that's  had  too  much 
bevel  plate  between  it  and  the  buffeting  winds  of  the 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

world.  But  it's  lovely  to  look  upon,  especially  when 
it's  touched  with  its  almost  imperceptible  shell-pink 
of  excitement  as  it  was  this  afternoon  when  Susie 
climbed  on  B  untie  and  tried  a  canter  or  two  about 
the  corrals.  Susie,  I  noticed,  rode  well.  I  couldn't 
quite  make  out  why  her  riding  made  me  at  once  think 
of  Theobald  Gustav.  But  she  explained,  later,  that 
she  had  been  taught  by  a  German  riding-master — • 
and  then  I  understood. 

But  I  must  not  overlook  Gershom,  who  duly 
donned  his  Sunday  best  in  honor  of  Susie's  arrival 
and  who  is  already  undertaking  to  educate  the  brood 
ing-eyed  young  lady  from  the  East.  He  explained  to 
her  that  there  were  eight  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
square  miles  of  Canada  still  unexplored,  and  Susie 
said :  "Then  lead  me  into  the  most  far-away  part  of 
it !"  And  when  he  told  her,  during  their  first  meal 
together,  that  the  human  brain  was  estimated  to  con 
tain  half  a  billion  cells  and  that  the  number  of  brain 
impressions  collected  by  an  average  person  during 
fifty  years  of  life  aggregated  three  billion,  one  hun-. 
dred  and  fifty-five  million,  seven  hundred  and  sixty 
thousand,  Susie  sighed  and  said  it  was  no  wonder 
women  were  so  contradictory.  Which  impressed  me 
as  very  like  one  of  my  own  retorts  to  Gershom.  I 


216  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

saw  Susie  studying  him,  studying  him  with  a  quiet 
and  meditative  eye.  "I  believe  your  Gershom  is  one 
of  the  few  good  men  in  the  world,"  she  afterward 
acknowledged  to  me.  And  I've  been  wondering  why 
one  so  young  should  be  saturated  with  cynicism. 

A  snrall  incident  occurred  to-night  which  disturbed 
me  more  than  I  can  explain  to  myself.  Susie,  who 
had  been  looking  through  one  of  Dinkie's  school 
scribblers,  guardedly  passed  the  book  over  to  me 
where  I  sat  sewing  in  front  of  the  fire.  For,  whatever 
may  happen,  a  prairie  mother  can  always  find  plenty 
of  sewing  to  do.  I  looked  at  the  bottom  of  the  page 
which  Susie  pointed  out  to  me.  There  I  saw  two 
names,  one  above  the  other,  with  certain  of  the  letters 
stricken  out,  two  names  written  like  this: 

love 
/ friendship 

And  that  set  me  off  in  a  brown  study  which  even 
Susie  seemed  to  fathom.  She  smiled  understanding!}' 
and  turned  and  inspected  Dinkie,  bent  over  his  arith 
metic,  with  an  entirely  new  curiosity. 

"I  suppose  that's  what  every  mother  has  to  face, 
some  day,"  she  said  as  she  sat  down  beside  me  in  front 
of  the  fire. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  217 

But  it  seemed  a  fire  without  warmth.  Life,  ap 
parently,  had  brought  me  to  another  of  its  Great 
Divides.  My  boy  had  a  secret  apart  from  his 
mother.  My  son  was  no  longer  all  mine. 


Friday  the  Fifth 

THIS  morning  at  breakfast,  when  Dinkie  and  I  were 
alone  at  the  table,  I  crossed  over  to  him  and  sat  down 
beside  him. 

"Dinkie,"  I  said,  with  my  hand  on  his  tousled 
young  head,  "whom  do  you  love  best  in  all  the 
world?" 

"Mummy !"  he  said,  looking  me  straight  in  the  eye. 
And  at  that  I  drank  in  a  deep  breath. 

"Are  you  sure?"  I  demanded. 

"As  sure  as  death  and  taxes,"  he  said  with  his 
one-sided  little  smile.  It  was  a  phrase  which  his 
father  used  to  use,  on  similar  occasions,  in  the  long, 
long  ago.  And  it  didn't  quite  drive  the  mists  out  of 
my  heart. 

"And  who  comes  next?"  I  asked,  with  my  hand  still 
on  his  head. 

"Buntie,"  he  replied,  with  what  I  suspected  to  be  a 
barricaded  look  on  his  face. 

"No,  no,"  I  told  him.  "It  has  to  be  a  human  being." 

"Then  Poppsy,"  he  admitted. 
218 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  219 

"And  who  next?"  I  persisted. 

"Whinnie !"  exclaimed  my  son. 

But  I  had  to  shake  my  head  at  that. 

"Aren't  you  forgetting  somebody  very  impor 
tant?"  I  hinted. 

"Who?"  he  asked,  deepening  just  a  trifle  in  color. 

"How  about  daddy?"  I  asked.  "Isn't  it  about 
time  for  him  there?" 

"Yes,  daddy,"  he  dutifully  repeated.  But  his 
face  cleared,  and  my  own  heart  clouded,  as  he  went 
through  the  empty  rite. 

Dinkie  was  studying  that  clouded  face  of  mine,  by 
this  time,  and  I  began  to  feel  embarrassed.  But  I 
was  determined  to  see  the  thing  through.  It  was 
hard,  though,  for  me  to  say  what  I  wanted  to. 

"Isn't  there  somebody,  somebody  else  you  are 
especially  fond  of?"  I  inquired,  as  artlessly  as  I 
could.  And  it  hurt  like  cold  steel  to  think  that  I 
had  to  fence  with  my  own  boy  in  such  a  fashion. 

Dinkie  looked  at  me  and  then  he  looked  out  of  the 
window. 

"I  think  I  like  Susie,"  he  finally  admitted. 

"But  in  your  own  life,  Dinkie,  in  your  work  and 
your  play,  in  your  school,  isn't — isn't  there  some 
body?"  I  found  the  courage  to  ask. 


220 

Dinkie's  face  grew  thoughtful.  For  just  a  moment, 
I  thought  I  caught  a  touch  of  the  Holbein  Astron 
omer  in  it. 

"There's  lots  of  boys  and  girls  I  like,"  he  non- 
committally  asserted.  And  I  began  to  see  that  it  was 
hopeless.  My  boy  had  reservations  from  his  own 
mother,  reservations  which  I  would  be  compelled  to 
respect.  He  was  no  longer  entirely  and  unequivocally 
mine.  There  was  a  wild-bird  part  of  him  which  had 
escaped,  which  I  could  never  recapture  and  cage 
again.  The  thing  that  his  father  had  foretold  was 
really  coming  about.  My  laddie  would  some  day 
grow  out  of  my  reach.  I  would  lose  him.  And  my 
happiness,  which  had  been  trying  its  wings  for  the 
last  few  days,  came  down  out  .of  the  sky  like  a  shot 
duck.  All  day  long,  for  Susie's  sake,  I've  tried  to 
be  light-hearted.  But  my  efforts  make  me  think  of  a 
poor  old  worn-out  movie-hall  piano  doing  its  pathetic 
level  best  to  be  magnificently  blithe.  It's  a  meaning 
less  clatter  in  a  meaningless  world. 


Thursday  the  Eleventh 

IT  ought  to  be  winter,  according  to  the  almanac, 
but  our  wonderful  Indian  Summer  weather  continues. 
Susie  and  I  have  been  "blue-doming"  to-day.  We  con 
verted  ourselves  into  a  mounted  escort  for  Gershom 
and  the  kiddies  as  far  as  the  schoolhouse,  and  then 
rode  on  to  Dead  Horse  Lake,  in  the  hope  of  getting 
a  few  duck.  But  the  weather  was  too  fine,  though  I 
managed  to  bring  down  a  couple  of  mallard,  after 
one  of  which  Susie,  having  removed  her  shoes  and 
stockings,  waded  knee-deep  in  the  slough.  She  enjoys 
that  sort  of  thing:  it's  something  so  entirely  new  to 
the  child  of  the  city.  And  Susie,  I  might  add,  is 
already  looking  much  better.  She  is  sleeping  soundly, 
at  last,  and  has  promised  me  there  shall  be  no  more 
night-caps  of  veronal.  What  is  more,  I  am  getting 
to  know  her  better — and  I  have  several  revisions  to 
make. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  the  family  divorce  cloud 
that  has  been  darkening  Susie's  soul.  She  let  the 
cat  out  of  the  bag,  on  the  way  home  this  afternoon. 
Susie  has  been  in  love  with  a  man  who  didn't  come  up 

221 


222  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

to  expectations.  She  was  very  much  in  love,  appar 
ently,  and  disregarded  what  people  said  about  him. 
Then,  much  to  her  surprise,  her  Uncle  Peter  took  a 
hand  in  the  game.  It  must  have  been  rather  a  violent 
hand,  for  a  person  so  habitually  placid.  But  Peter, 
apparently,  wasn't  altogether  ignorant  of  the  club- 
talk  about  the  young  rake  in  question.  At  any  rate, 
he  decided  it  was  about  time  to  act.  Susie  declined 
to  explain  in  just  what  way  he  acted.  Yet  she 
admits  now  that  Peter  was  entirely  in  the  right  and 
she,  for  a  time,  was  entirely  in  the  wrong.  But  it  is 
rather  like  having  one's  appendix  cut  out,  she  pro 
tests,  without  an  anesthetic.  It  takes  time  to  heal 
such  wounds.  Susie  obviously  was  bowled  over.  She 
is  still  suffering  from  shock.  But  I  like  the  spirit  of 
the  girl.  She's  not  the  kind  that  one  disappointment 
is  going  to  kill.  And  prairie  life  is  already  doing  her 
good.  For  she  announced  this  morning  that  her 
clothes  were  positively  getting  tight  for  her.  And 
such  clothes  they  are!  Such  delicate  silks  and  cob 
webs  of  lace  and  pale-pink  contraptions  of  satin ! 
Such  neatly  tailored  skirts  and  short-vamped  shoes 
and  thing-a-ma-j  igs  of  Irish  linen  and  platinum  and 
gold  trinkets  to  deck  out  her  contemptuous  little 
body  with.  For  Susie  takes  them  all  with  a  shrug 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

of  indifference.  She  loves  to  slip  on  my  oil-stained 
old  hunting- j  acket  and  my  weather-beaten  old  golf- 
boots  and  go  meandering  about  the  range. 

Another  revision  which  I  am  compelled  to  make  is 
that  while  I  expected  to  be  the  means  of  cheering 
Susie  up,  Susie  has  quite  unconsciously  been  the 
means  of  rejuvenating  me.  I  think  I've  been  able  to 
catch  at  least  a  hollow  echo  of  her  youth  from  her. 
I  know  I  have.  Two  days  ago,  when  we  motored  in 
to  Buckhorn  with  my  precious  marketing  of  butter 
and  eggs — and  Susie  never  before  quite  realized  how 
butter  and  eggs  reached  the  ultimate  consumer — a 
visiting  Odd-Fallows'  band  was  playing  a  two-step 
on  the  balcony  of  the  Commercial  Hotel.  Susie  and 
I  stopped  the  car,  and  while  Struthers  stared  at  us 
aghast  from  the  back  seat,  we  two-stepped  together 
on  the  main  street  of  Buckhorn.  We  just  let  the 
music  go  to  our  heads  and  danced  there  until  the 
crowd  in  front  of  the  band  began  to  right-about-face 
and  a  cowboy  in  chaps  brazenly  announced  that  he 
was  Susie's  next  partner.  So  we  danced  to  our  run 
ning-board,  stepped  into  our  devil-wagon,  and  headed 
for  home,  in  the  icy  aura  of  Struthers'  sustained  in 
dignation. 

I  begin  to  get  terribly  tired  of  propriety.     I  don't 


224  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

know  whether  it's  Struthers,  or  Struthers  and  Ger- 
shom  combined,  or  having  to  watch  one's  step  so  when 
there  are  children  about  one.  But  I'm  tired  of  being 
respectable.  I'm  tired  of  holding  myself  in.  I  warn 
the  world  that  I'm  about  ready  for  anything,  any 
thing  from  horse-stealing  to  putting  a  dummy-lady 
in  Whinstane  Sandy's  bed.  I  don't  believe  there's 
any  wickedness  that's  beyond  me.  I'm  a  reckless  and 
abandoned  woman.  And  if  that  cold-blooded  old 
Covenanter  doesn't  get  home  from  Calgary  pretty 
soon  I'm  going  buckboard  riding  with  Bud  Teetzel ! 

I've  been  asking  Susie  if  we  measure  up  to  her 
expectations.  She  said,  in  reply,  that  we  fitted  in  to 
a  T.  For  her  Uncle  Peter,  she  acknowledged,  had 
already  done  us  in  oils  on  the  canvas  of  her  curiosity. 
She  accused  me,  however,  of  reveling  in  that  primi- 
tiveness  which  is  the  last  resort  of  the  sophisticated — 
like  the  log  cabins  the  city  folk  fashion  for  themselves 
when  they  get  up  in  the  Adirondacks.  And  Casa 
Grande,  she  further  amended,  impressed  her  as  being 
almost  disappointingly  comfortable. 

After  that  Susie  fell  to  talking  about  Peter.  She 
is  affectionately  contemptuous  toward  her  uncle,  pro 
testing  that  he's  forever  throwing  away  his  chances 
and  letting  other  people  impose  on  his  good  nature. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  225 

It  was  lucky,  averred  Susie,  that  he  was  born  with  a 
silver  spoon  in  his  mouth.  For  he  was  a  hopeless 
espouser  of  Lost  Causes.  She  inclined  to  the  belief 
that  he  should  have  married  young,  should  have  mar 
ried  young  and  had  a  flock  of  children,  for  he  was 
crazy  about  kiddies. 

I  asked  Susie  what  sort  of  wife  Peter  should  have 
chosen.  And  Susie  said  Peter  should  have  hitched  up 
with  a  good,  capable,  practical-minded  woman  who 
could  manage  him  without  letting  him  know  he  was 
being  managed.  There  was  a  widow  in  the  East, 
acknowledged  his  niece,  who  had  been  angling  for 
poor  Peter  for  years.  And  Peter  was  still  free, 
Susie  suspected,  because  in  the  presence  of  that 
widow  he  emulated  Hamlet  and  always  put  an  antic 
disposition  on.  Did  the  most  absurd  things,  and  ap 
peared  to  be  little  more  than  half-witted.  The  widow 
in  question  had  even  spoken  to  Susie  about  her  uncle's 
eccentricities  and  intimated  that  his  segregative  man 
ner  of  life  might  in  the  end  affect  his  intellect ! 

The  thought  of  Peter  marrying  rather  gave  me  a 
shock.  It  was  like  being  told  by  some  authority  in 
astronomy  that  your  earth  was  about  to  collide  with 
Wernecke's  Comet.  And,  vain  peacock  that  I  was,  I 
rather  liked  to  think  of  Peter  going  through  life 


226  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

mourning  for  me,  alone  and  melancholy  and  rrisogy- 
nistic  for  the  rest  of  his  days !  Yet  there  must  be 
dozens,  there  must  be  hundreds,  of  attractive  girls 
along  the  paths  which  he  travels.  I  found  the  cour 
age  to  mention  this  fact  to  Susie,  who  merely  laughed 
and  said  her  Uncle  Peter  would  probably  be  saved  by 
his  homeliness.  But  I  can't  say  that  I  ever  regarded 
Peter  Ketley  as  homely.  He  may  never  carry  off  a 
blue  ribbon  from  a  beauty  show,  but  he  has  the  sort 
of  face  that  a  woman  of  sense  can  find  tremendous 
appeal  in.  Your  flapper  type,  I  suppose,  will  always 
succumb  to  the  curled  Romeo,  but  it's  the  ruggeder 
and  stronger  man  with  the  bright  mind  and  the 
kindly  heart  who  will  always  appeal  to  the  clearer- 
eyed  woman  who  has  come  to  know  life  .  .  .  Susie 
has  told  me,  by  the  way,  that  Josie  Langdon  and  her 
husband  quarreled  on  their  honeymoon,  quarreled 
the  first  week  in  Paris  and  right  across  the  Continent 
for  the  momentous  reason  that  Josie  insisted  on  put 
ting  sugar  m  her  claret! 

I've  been  doing  a  good  deal  of  thinking,  the  last 
few  hours.  I've  been  wondering  if  I'm  a  Lost  Cause. 
And  I've  been  wondering  why  women  should  want  to 
put  sugar  in  their  claret.  If  it's  made  to  be  bitter, 
why  not  accept  the  bitterness,  and  let  it  go  at  that? 


Friday  the  Twelfth 

DINKY-DUNK  has  just  sent  woi"3  Jmt  he  will  be 
home  to-morrow  night  and  asks  if  I'll  mind  motoring 
in  to  Buckhorn  for  him. 

It  impresses  me  as  a  non-committal  little  message, 
yet  it  means  more  to  me  than  I  imagined.  My  hus 
band  is  coming  home. 

Susie  has  been  eying  me  all  afternoon,  with  a 
pucker  of  perplexity  about  her  lapis-lazuli  eyes.  We 
are  busy,  getting  things  to  rights.  And  I've  made  an 
appallingly  long  list  of  what  I  must  buy  in  Buckhorn 
to-morrow.  Even  Struthers  has  perked  up  a  bit,  and 
is  making  furtive  preparations  for  a  sage-tea  wash  in 
the  morning. 


227 


Tuesday  the  Sixteenth 

WHY  is  life  so  tangled  up  ?  Why  can't  we  be  either 
completely  happy  or  completely  the  other  way? 
Why  must  wretchedness  come  sandwiched  in  between 
slices  of  hope  and  contentment,  and  why  must  hap 
piness  be  haunted  by  some  ghostly  echo  of  pain? 
Arid  why  can't  people  be  all  good  or  all  bad,  so  that 
the  tares  and  the  wheat  never  get  mixed  up  together 
and  make  a  dismal  mess  of  our  harvest  of  Expecta 
tion  ? 

These  are  some  of  the  questions  I've  been  asking 
myself  since  Duncan  went  back  to  Calgary  last  night. 
He  stayed  only  two  days.  And  they  were  days  of 
terribly  complicated  emotions.  I  went  to  the  station 
for  him,  on  Saturday,  and  in  my  impatience  to  be 
there  on  time  found  myself  with  an  hour  and  a  half 
of  waiting,  an  hour  and  a  half  of  wandering  up  and 
down  that  ugly  open  platform  in  the  clear  cool  light 
of  evening.  There  was  a  hint  of  winter  in  the  air,  an 
intimidating  northern  nip  which  made  the  thought 
of  a  warm  home  and  an  open  fire  a  consolation  to  the 

228 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  229 

chilled  heart.  And  I  felt  depressed,  in  spite  of  every 
thing  I  could  do  to  bolster  up  my  courage.  In  the 
first  place,  I  couldn't  keep  from  thinking  of  Alsina 
Teeswater.  And  in  the  second  place,  never,  never  on 
the  prairie,  have  I  watched  a  railway-train  come  in 
or  a  railway-train  pass  away  without  feeling  lone 
some.  It  reminds  me  how  big  is  the  outside  world, 
how  infinitesimal  is  Chaddie  McKail  and  her  unre- 
membered  existence  up  here  a  thousand  miles  from 
Nowhere !  It  humbles  me.  It  reminds  me  that  I  have 
in  some  way  failed  to  mesh  in  with  the  bigger  ma 
chinery  of  life. 

I  had  a  lump  in  my  throat,  by  the  time  Dinky- 
Dunk's  train  pulled  in  and  I  saw  him  swing  down 
from  the  car-steps.  I  made  for  him  through  the 
crowd,  in  fact,  with  my  all  but  forgotten  Australian 
crawl-stroke,  and  accosted  him  with  rather  a  briny 
kiss  and  so  tight  a  hug  that  he  stood  back  and  stud 
ied  my  face.  He  wanted  to  ask,  I  know,  if  anything 
had  happened.  He  was  obviously  startled,  and  just 
a  trifle  embarrassed.  My  lump,  by  this  time,  was 
bigger  than  ever,  but  I  had  to  swallow  it  in  secret. 
Dinky-Dunk,  I  found,  was  changed  in  many  ways. 
He  was  tired,  and  he  seemed  older.  But  he  was  pros 
perous-looking,  in  brand-new  raiment,  and  reported 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

that  luck  was  still  with  him  and  everything  was  flour 
ishing.  Give  him  one  year,  he  protested,  and  he'd 
show  them  he  wasn't  a  piker. 

I  waited  for  him  to  ask  about  the  children,  but  his 
mind  seemed  full  of  his  Barcona  coal  business.  The 
railway  was  learning  to  treat  them  half  decently  and 
the  coal  was  coming  out  better  than  they'd  hoped  for. 
They'd  a  franchise  to  light  the  town,  developing 
their  power  from  the  mine  screenings,  and  what  they 
got  from  this  would  be  so  much  velvet.  And  he  had  a 
chance  to  take  over  one  of  the  finest  houses  in  Mount 
Royal,  if  he  had  a  family  along  with  him  to  excuse 
such  magnificence. 

That  final  speech  of  his  brought  me  up  short.  It 
was  dark  along  the  trail,  and  dark  in  my  heart.  And 
more  things  than  one  had  happened  that  day  to 
humble  me.  So  I  took  one  hand  off  the  wheel  and  put 
it  on  his  knee. 

"Do  you  want  me  to  go  to  Calgary?"  I  asked  him. 

"That's  up  to  you,"  he  said,  without  budging  an 
inch.  He  said  it,  in  fact,  with  a  steel-cold  finality 
which  sent  my  soul  cringing  back  into  its  kennel. 
And  the  trail  ahead  of  me  seemed  blacker  than  ever. 

"I'll  have  to  have  time  to  think  it  over,"  I  said  with 
a  composure  which  was  nine-tenths  pretense. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"Some  wives,"  he  remarked,  "are  willing  to  help 
their  husbands." 

"I  know  it,  Dinky-Dunk,"  I  acknowledged,  hoping 
against  hope  he'd  give  me  the  opening  I  was  looking 
for.  "And  I  want  to  help,  if  you'll  only  let  me." 

"I  think  I'm  doing  my  part,"  he  rather  solemnly 
asserted.  I  couldn't  see  his  face,  in  the  dark,  but 
there  was  little  hope  to  be  wrung  from  the  tone  of 
his  voice.  So  I  knew  it  would  be  best  to  hold  my 
peace. 

Casa  Grande  blazed  a  welcome  to  us,  as  we  drove 
up  to  it,  and  the  children,  thank  heaven,  were  reliev- 
ingly  boisterous  over  the  adventure  of  their  dad's 
return.  He  seemed  genuinely  amazed  at  their  growth, 
seemed  slightly  irritated  at  Dinkie's  long  stares  of 
appraisal,  and  feigned  an  interest  in  the  paraded  new 
possessions  of  Poppsy  and  her  brother — until  it 
came  to  Peter's  toy  air-ship,  which  was  thrust  almost 
bruskly  aside. 

And  that  reminds  me  of  one  thing  which  I  am  re 
luctant  to  acknowledge.  Dinky-Dunk  was  anything 
but  nice  to  Susie.  He  may  have  his  perverse  reasons 
for  disliking  everything  in  any  way  connected  with 
Peter  Ketley,  but  I  at  least  expected  my  husband  to 
be  agreeable  to  the  casual  guest  under  his  roof, 


232  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Through  it  all,  I  must  confess,  Susie  was  wonderful. 
She  made  no  effort  to  ignore  Duncan,  as  his  ignoring 
of  her  only  too  plainly  merited.  She  remained,  not 
only  poised  and  imperturbable,  but  impersonal  and 
impenetrable.  She  found  herself,  I  think,  driven 
just  a  tiny  bit  closer  to  Gershom,  who  still  shows  a 
placid  exterior  to  Duncan's  slightly  contemptuous 
indifference. 

My  husband,  I'm  afraid,  was  not  altogether  happy 
in  his  own  home.  In  one  way,  of  course,  I  can  not 
altogether  blame  him  for  that,  since  his  bigger  inter 
ests  now  are  outside  that  home.  But  I  begin  to  see 
how  dangerous  these  long  separations  can  be.  Some 
where  and  at  some  time,  before  too  much  water  runs 
under  the  bridges,  there  will  have  to  be  a  readjust 
ment. 

I  realized  that,  in  fact,  as  I  drove  Duncan  back  to 
the  station  last  night,  after  I'd  duly  signed  the  dif 
ferent  papers  he'd  brought  for  that  purpose.  I  had 
a  feeling  that  every  chug  of  the  motor  was  carrying 
him  further  and  further  out  of  my  life.  Heaven 
knows,  I  was  willing  enough  to  eat  crow.  I  was  ready 
to  burj'  the  hatchet,  and  bury  it  in  my  own  bosom, 
if  need  be,  rather  than  see  it  swinging  free  to  strike 
some  deeper  blow. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  233 

"Dinky-Dunk,"  I  said  after  a  particularly  long 
silence  between  us,  "what  is  it  you  want  me  to  do?" 

My  heart  was  beating  much  faster  than  he  could 
have  imagined  and  I  was  grateful  for  the  chance  to 
pretend  the  road  was  taking  up  most  of  my  attention. 

"Do  about  what?"  he  none  too  encouragingly  in 
quired. 

"We  don't  seem  to  be  hitting  it  off  the  way  we 
should  be,"  I  went  on,  speaking  as  quietly  as  I  was 
able.  "And  I  want  you  to  tell  me  where  I'm  failing  to 
do  my  share." 

That  note  of  humility  from  me  must  have  sur 
prised  him  a  little,  for  we  rode  quite  a  distance  with 
out  a  word. 

"What  makes  you  feel  that  way?"  he  finally  asked. 

I  found  it  hard  to  answer  that  question.  It  would 
never  be  easy,  at  any  rate,  to  answer  it  as  I  wanted  to. 

"Because  things  can't  go  on  this  way  forever,"  I 
found  the  courage  to  tell  him. 

"Why  not?"  he  asked.  He  seemed  indifferent 
again. 

"Because  they're  all  wrong,"  I  rather  tremulously 
replied.  "Can't  you  see  they're  all  wrong?" 

"But  why  do  you  want  them  changed?"  he  asked 
with  a  disheartening  sort  of  impersonality. 


234  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"For  the  sake  of  the  children,"  I  told  him.  And 
I  could  feel  the  impatient  movement  of  his  body  on  the 
car  seat  beside  me. 

"The  children !"  he  repeated  with  acid-drop  delib 
eration.  "The  children,  of  course!  It's  always  the 
children !" 

"You're  still  their  father,"  I  reminded  him. 

"A  sort  of  honorary  president  of  the  family,"  he 
amended. 

Hope  ebbed  out  of  my  heart,  like  air  out  of  a 
punctured  tire. 

"Aren't  you  making  it  rather  hard  for  me?"  I 
demanded,  trying  to  hold  myself  in,  but  feeling  the 
bob-cat  getting  the  better  of  the  purring  tabby. 

"I've  rather  concluded  that  was  the  way  you  made 
it  for  me,"  countered  Duncan,  with  a  coolness  of  man 
ner  which  I  came  more  and  more  to  resent. 

"In  what  way?"  I  asked. 

"In  shutting  up  shop,"  he  rather  listlessly  re 
sponded. 

"I  don't  think  I  quite  understand,"  I  told  him. 

"Well,  in  crowbarring  me  out  of  your  scheme  of 
life,  if  you  insist  on  knowing,"  were  the  words  that 
came  from  the  husband  sitting  so  close  beside  me. 
"You  had  your  other  interests,  of  course.  But  you 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  235 

also  seem  to  have  had  the  idea  that  you  could  turn  me 
loose  like  a  range  horse.  I  could  paw  for  my  fodder 
and  eat  snow  when  I  got  thirsty.  You  didn't  even 
care  to  give  me  a  wind-break  to  keep  a  forty-mile 
blizzard  out  of  my  bones.  You  didn't  know  where  I 
was  browsing,  and  didn't  much  care.  It  was  up  to 
me  to  rustle  for  myself  and  be  rounded  up  when  the 
winter  was  over  and  there  was  another  spell  of  work 
on  hand!" 

We  rode  on  in  silence,  for  almost  a  mile,  with  the 
cold  air  beating  against  my  body  and  a  colder  numb 
ness  creeping  about  the  corner  of  my  heart. 

"Do  you  mean,  Dinky-Dunk,"  I  finally  asked, 
"that  you  want  your  freedom?" 

"I'm  not  saying  that,"  he  said,  after  another  short 
silence. 

"Then  what  is  it  you  want?"  I  asked,  wondering 
why  the  windshield  should  look  so  blurred  in  the 
half-light. 

"I  want  to  get  something  out  of  life,"  was  his  em 
bittered  retort. 

It  was  a  retort  that  I  thought  over,  thought  over 
with  an  oddly  settling  mind,  like  a  stirred  pool  that 
has  been  left  to  clear  itself.  For  that  grown  man 
sitting  there  beside  me  seemed  ridiculously  like  a 


236  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

spoiled  child,  an  indulged  child  forlornly  alone  in  the 
fogs  of  his  own  arrogance.  He  made  me  think  of  a 
black  bear  which  bites  at  the  bullet  wound  in  his  own 
body.  I  felt  suddenly  sorry  for  him,  in  a  maternal 
sort  of  way.  I  felt  sorry  for  him  at  the  same  time 
that  I  remained  a  trifle  afraid  of  him,  for  he  still  pos 
sessed,  I  knew,  his  black-bear  power  of  inflicting  un 
looked-for  and  ursine  blows.  I  simply  ached  to  swing 
about  on  him  and  say :  "Dinky-Dunk,  what  you  need 
is  a  good  spanking !"  But  I  didn't  have  the  courage. 
I  had  to  keep  my  sense  of  humor  under  cover,  just  as 
you  have  to  blanket  garden-geraniums  before  the 
threat  of  a  black  frost.  Yet,  oddly  enough,  I  felt 
fortified  by  that  sense  of  pity.  It  seemed  to  bring 
with  it  the  impression  that  Duncan  was  still  a  small 
boy  who  might  some  day  grow  out  of  his  badness.  It 
made  me  feel  suddenly  older  and  wiser  than  this  over 
grown  child  who  was  still  crying  for  the  moon.  And 
with  that  feeling  came  a  wave  of  tolerance,  followed 
by  a  smaller  wave  of  faith,  of  faith  that  everything 
might  yet  come  out  right,  if  only  I  could  learn  to  be 
patient,  as  mothers  are  patient  with  children. 

"And  I,  on  my  part,  Dinky-Dunk,  want  to  see  you 
get  the  very  best  out  of  life,"  I  found  myself  saying 
to  him.  My  intentions  were  good,  but  I  suppose  I 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  237 

made  my  speech  in  a  very  superior  and  school- 
teachery  sort  of  way. 

"I  guess  I've  got  about  all  that's  coming  to  me," 
he  retorted,  with  the  note  of  bitterness  still  in  his 
voice. 

And  again  I  had  the  feeling  of  sitting  mother- 
wise  and  mother-patient  beside  an  unruly  small  boy. 

"There's  much  more,  Dinky-Dunk,  if  you  only  ask 
for  it,"  I  said  as  gently  as  I  was  able. 

He  turned,  at  that,  and  studied  me  in  the  failing 
light,  studied  me  with  a  sharp  look  of  interrogation 
on  his  face.  I  had  the  feeling,  as  he  did  so,  of  some 
thing  epochal  in  the  air,  as  though  the  drama  of  life 
were  narrowing  up  to  its  climactic  last  moment.  Yet 
I  felt  helpless  to  direct  the  course  of  that  drama. 
I  nursed  the  impression  that  we  stood  at  the  parting 
of  the  ways,  that  we  stood  hesitating  at  the  fork  of 
two  long  and  lonely  trails  which  struck  off  across  an 
illimitable  world,  farther  and  farther  apart.  I 
vaguely  regretted  that  we  were  already  in  the  streets 
of  Buckhorn,  for  I  was  half  hoping  that  Duncan 
would  tell  me  to  stop  the  car.  Then  I  vaguely  re 
gretted  that  I  was  busy  driving  that  car,  as  other 
wise  I  might  have  been  free  to  get  my  arms  about  that 
granitic  Dour  Man  of  mine  and  strangle  him  into 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

submitting  to  that  momentary  mood  of  softness 
which  seems  to  come  less  and  less  to  the  male  as  he 
grows  older. 

But  Duncan  merely  laughed,  a  bit  uneasily,  and 
just  as  suddenly  grew  silent  again.  I  had  a  sense  of 
asbestos  curtains  coming  down  between  us,  coming 
down  before  the  climax  was  reached  or  the  drama 
was  ended.  I  couldn't  help  wondering,  as  we  drove 
into  the  cindered  station-yard  where  the  lights  were 
already  twinkling,  if  Dinky-Dunk,  like  myself,  sat 
waiting  for  something  which  failed  to  manifest  itself, 
if  he  too  had  held  back  before  the  promise  of  some 
decisive  word  which  I  was  without  the  power  to  utter. 
For  we  were  only  half-warm,  the  two  of  us,  toying 
with  the  ghosts  of  the  dead  past  and  childishly  afraid 
of  the  future.  We  were  Laodiceans,  neither  hot  nor 
cold,  without  the  primal  hunger  to  reach  out  and 
possess  what  we  too  timidly  desired.  We  were  more 
neutral  even  than  Ferdinand  and  the  Lady  of  the 
Bust,  for  we  no  longer  cared  sufficiently  to  let  the 
other  know  we  cared,  but  waited  and  waited  in  that 
twilight  where  all  cats  arc  gray. 

There  was,  mercifully,  very  little  time  left  for  us 
before  the  train  came  in.  We  kept  our  masks  on,  and 
talked  only  of  every-day  things,  about  the  receipt 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  239 

for  the  ranch  taxes  and  what  steers  Whinnie  should 
"finish"  and  the  new  granary  roof  and  the  fire-lines 
about  the  haystacks.  Without  quite  knowing  it, 
when  the  train  pulled  in,  I  put  my  arm  through  my 
husband's — and  for  the  second  time  that  evening  he 
turned  sharply  and  inspected  my  face.  I  felt  as 
though  I  wanted  to  hold  him  back,  to  hold  him  back 
from  something  unescapable  but  tragically  momen 
tous.  I  think  he  felt  sorry  for  me.  At  any  rate, 
after  he  had  swung  his  suit-case  up  on  the  car-plat 
form,  he  turned  and  kissed  me  good-by.  But  it  was 
the  sort  of  kiss  one  gets  at  funerals.  It  left  me 
standing  there  watching  the  tail-lights  blink  off  down 
the  track,  as  desolate  as  though  I  had  been  left  alone 
on  the  deadest  promontory  of  the  deadest  planet 
lost  in  space.  I  stood  there  until  the  lights  were 
gone.  I  stood  there  until  the  platform  was  empty 
again  and  my  car  was  the  only  car  left  along  the 
hard-packed  cinders.  So  I  climbed  into  the  driving- 
seat,  and  pulled  on  my  gauntlets,  and  headed  for 
home. .  .  . 

Back  at  Casa  Grande  I  found  Dinkie  and  Whinnie 
beside  the  bunk-house  stove,  struggling  companion- 
ably  through  the  opening  chapters  of  Treasure 
Island.  My  boy  smiled  up  at  me,  for  a  moment,  but 


240  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

his  mind,  I  could  see,  was  intent  on  the  page  along 
which  Whinnie's  stubbled  finger  was  crawling  like  a 
plowshare  beside  each  furrow  of  text.  He  was  in 
the  South  Pacific,  a  thousand  miles  away  from  me. 
In  my  own  house  Struthers  was  putting  a  petulant- 
voiced  Poppsy  to  bed,  and  Gershom,  up  in  his  room, 
was  making  extraordinary  smells  at  his  chemistry 
experiments.  Susie  I  found  curled  comfortably  up  in 
front  of  the  fire,  idling  over  my  first  volume  of  Jean 
Christ ophe. 

She  read  three  sentences  aloud  as  I  sat  down  beside 
her.  "How  happy  he  is !  He  is  made  to  be  happy ! 
„  .  .  Life  will  soon  see  to  it  that  he  is  brought  to 
reason." 

She  seemed  to  expect  some  comment  from  me,  but 
I  found  myself  with  nothing  to  say.  In  fact,  we  both 
sat  there  for  a  long  time,  staring  in  silence  at  the 
fire. 

"Why  do  you  live  with  a  man  you  don't  love?"  she 
suddenly  asked  out  of  the  utter  stillness. 

It  startled  me,  that  question.  It  also  embarrassed 
me,  for  I  could  feel  my  color  mount  as  Susie's  lapis- 
lazuli  eyes  rested  on  my  face. 

"What  makes  you  think  I  don't  love  him?"  I 
countered,  reminding  myself  that  Susie,  after  all, 
was  still  a  girl  in  her  teens. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  241 

"It's  not  a  matter  of  thinking,"  was  Susie's  quiet 
retort.  "I  know  you  don't." 

"Then  I  wish  I  could  be  equally  certain,"  I  said 
with  a  defensive  stiffening  of  the  lines  of  dignity. 

But  Susie  smiled  rather  wearily  at  my  forlorn  little 
parade  of  hauteur.  Then  she  looked  at  the  fire. 

"It's  hell,  isn't  it,  being  a  woman?"  she  finally 
observed,  unconsciously  paraphrasing  a  much  older 
philosopher. 

"Sometimes,"  I  admitted. 

"I  don't  see  why  you  stand  it,"  was  her  next  medi 
tative  shaft  in  my  direction. 

"What  would  you  do  about  it?"  I  guardedly  in 
quired. 

Susie's  face  took  on  one  of  its  intent  looks.  She 
was  only  in  her  teens,  but  life,  after  all,  hadn't  dealt 
over-lightly  with  her.  She  impressed  me,  at  the 
moment,  as  a  secretly  ardent  young  person  whose 
hard-glazed  little  body  might  be  a  crucible  of  incan 
descent  though  invisible  emotions. 

"What  would  you  do  about  it?"  I  repeated,  won 
dering  what  gave  some  persons  the  royal  right  of 
doing  the  questionable  and  making  it  seem  unques 
tionable. 

"Live!"  said  Susie  with  quite  unlooked-for  em 
phasis.  "Live — whatever  it  costs !" 


243  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"Wouldn't  you  regard  this  as  living?"  I  asked, 
after  a  moment  of  thought. 

"Not  as  you  ought  to  be,"  averred  Susie. 

"Why  not?"  I  parried. 

Susie  sighed.  She  began  to  see  that  it  was  beyond 
argument,  I  suppose.  Then  she  too  had  her  period 
of  silence. 

"But  what  are  you  getting  out  of  it?"  she  finally 
demanded.  "What  is  going  to  happen?  What  ever 
lias  happened?" 

"To  whom?"  I  asked,  resenting  the  unconscious 
cruelty  of  her  questioning. 

"To  you,"  was  the  reply  of  the  hard-glazed  young 
hedonist  confronting  me. 

"Are  you  flattering  me  with  the  inference  that  I 
was  cut  out  for  better  things?"  I  interrogated  as  my 
gaze  met  Susie's.  It  was  her  turn  to  color  up  a  bit. 
Then  she  sighed  again,  and  shook  her  head. 

"I  don't  suppose  it's  doing  either  of  us  one  earthly 
bit  of  good,"  she  said  with  a  listless  small  smile  of 
atonement.  "And  I'm  sorry." 

So  we  let  the  skeletons  stalk  away  from  our  pleas 
ant  fireside  and  secrete  themselves  in  their  customary 
closets  of  silence. 

But  I've  been  thinking  a  good  deal  about  that 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

question  of  Susie's.  What  has  happened  to  me.  out 
here  on  the  prairie?  What  has  indeed  come  into  my 
life?  .  .  . 

I  married  young  and  put  a  stop  to  those  romantic 
adventurings  which  enrich  the  lives  of  most  girls  and 
enlighten  the  days  of  many  women.  I  married  a  man 
and  lived  with  him  in  a  prairie  shack,  and  sewed  and 
baked  for  him,  and  built  a  new  home  and  lost  it,  and 
began  over  again.  I  had  children,  and  saw  one  of 
them  die,  and  felt  my  girlhood  slip  away,  and  sold 
butter  and  eggs,  and  loved  the  man  of  my  choice  and 
cleaved  to  him  and  planned  for  my  children,  until  I 
saw  the  man  of  my  choice  love  another  woman.  And 
still  I  clung  to  my  sparless  hulk  of  a  home,  hoping 
to  hold  close  about  me  the  children  I  had  brought  into 
the  world  and  would  some  day  lose  again  to  the 
world.  And  that  was  all.  That  was  everything.  It 
is  true,  nothing  much  has  ever  happened  to  me.  .  .  . 

But  I  stop,  to  think  this  over.  If  these  are  the 
small  things,  then  what  are  the  big  things  of  life? 
What  is  it  that  other  women  get?  I  have  sung  and 
been  happy;  I  have  known  great  joy  and  walked  big 
with  Hope.  I  have  loved  and  been  loved.  I  have 
known  sorrow,  and  I  have  known  birth,  and  I  have  sat 
face  to  face  with  death.  I  have,  after  all,  pretty  well 


244  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

run  the  whole  gamut,  without  perhaps  realizing  it. 
For  these,  after  all,  are  the  big  things,  the  elemental 
things,  of  life.  They  are  the  basic  things  which  leave 
scant  room  for  the  momentary  fripperies  and  the 
hand-made  ornaments  of  existence.  .  .  . 

Heigho !  I  seem  to  grow  into  a  melancholy 
Jacques  with  the  advancing  years.  That's  the  way  of 
life,  I  suppose.  But  I've  no  intention  of  throwing 
up  the  sponge.  If  I  can  no  longer  get  as  much  fun 
out  of  the  game  as  I  want,  I  can  at  least  watch  my 
offspring  taking  their  joy  out  of  it.  God  be  thanked 
for  giving  us  our  children!  We  can  still  rest  our 
tired  old  eyes  on  them,  just  as  the  polisher  of  precious 
stones  used  to  keep  an  emerald  in  front  of  him,  to 
relieve  his  strained  vision  by  gazing  at  its  soft  and 
soothing  greenness. 

I  have  just  crept  in  to  take  a  look  at  my  precious 
Dinkie,  fast  asleep  in  the  old  cast-iron  crib  that  is 
growing  so  small  for  him  he  has  to  lie  catercornered 
on  his  mattress.  He  seemed  so  big,  stretched  out 
there,  that  he  frightened  me  with  the  thought  he 
couldn't  be  a  child  much  longer.  There  are  no  babies 
left  now  in  my  hom^  circle.  And  I  still  have  a  shame 
faced  sort  of  hankering  to  hold  a  baby  in  my  arms 
again ! 


Wednesday  the  Thirty-First 

SUSIE  has  promised  to  stay  with  us  until  after 
Christmas.  And  the  holidays,  I  realize,  are  only 
a  few  weeks  away.  Struthers  is  knitting  a  sweater 
of  flaming  red  and  rather  grimly  acknowledged, 
when  I  pinned  her  down,  that  it  was  for  Whin- 
stane  Sandy.  There  was  a  snow-flurry  Sunday,  and 
Gershom  took  Susie  riding  in  the  old  cutter,  scratch 
ing  grittity  along  the  half-covered  trails  but  ap 
parently  enjoying  it.  My  poor  little  Poppsy,  who 
rather  idolizes  Gershom,  is  transparently  jealous  of 
his  attentions  to  Susie.  Yet  Gershom,  I  know,  is 
nice  to  Susie  and  nothing  more.  He  is  still  my  loyal 
but  carefully  restrained  knight.  It's  a  shame,  I  sup 
pose,  to  bobweasel  him  the  way  I  occasionally  do. 
But  I  can't  quite  help  it.  His  goody-goodiness  is  as 
provocative  to  my  baser  nature  as  a  red  flag  to  an 
Andulasian  bull.  And  a  woman  who  was  once  reck 
oned  as  a  heart-breaker  has  to  keep  her  hand  in  with 
something.  I've  got  to  convince  myself  that  the  last 
shot  hasn't  gone  from  the  locker  which  Duncan 

245 


246  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Argyll  McKail  once  rifled.  I  spoiled  Gershom's  sup 
per  for  him  the  other  night  by  asking  what  it  was 
made  some  people  have  such  a  mysterious  influence 
over  other  people.  And  I  caught  him  up  short,  last 
Sunday  morning,  when  he  tried  to  argue  that  I  was 
a  sort  of  paragon  in  petticoats. 

"Don't  you  run  away  with  the  idea  I'm  that  kind 
of  an  angel,"  I  promptly  assured  him.  "I'm  an  out 
law,  from  saddle  to  sougan,  and  I  can  buck  like  a 
bear  fightin'  bees.  I'm  a  she-devil  crow-hopping 
around  in  skirts.  And  I  could  bu'st  every  command 
ment  slap-bang  across  my  knee,  once  I  got  started, 
and  leave  a  trail  of  crime  across  the  fair  face  of 
nature  that  would  make  an  old  Bow-Gun  vaquero's 
back-hair  stand  up.  I'm  just  a  woman,  Gershom,  a 
little  lonely  and  a  little  loony,  and  there's  so  much 
backed-up  bad  in  me  that  once  the  dam  gives  way 
there'll  be  a  hell-roaring  old  whoop-up  along  these 
dusty  old  trails !" 

Gershom  turned  white. 

"But  there's  your  little  ones  to  think  of,"  he 
quaveringly  reminded  me. 

"Yes,  there's  my  little  ones  to  think  of,"  I  echoed, 
wondering  where  I'd  heard  that  familiar  old  refrain 
before.  My  bark,  after  all,  is  much  worse  than  my 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  247 

bite.  About  all  I  can  do  is  take  things  out  in  talk. 
I'm  only  a  faded  beauty,  brooding  over  my  antique 
adventures  as  a  heart-breaker.  But  I  know  of  one 
heart  I'd  still  like  to  break — if  I  had  the  power.  No ; 
not  break ;  but  bend  up  to  the  cracking  point ! 


Monday  the  Nineteenth 

How  Time  takes  wing  for  the  busy !  It's  only  six 
days  to  Christmas  and  I've  still  my  box  to  get  off 
for  Olga  and  her  children.  We've  sent  to  Peter  some 
really  charming  snap-shots  of  the  children,  which 
Susie  took.  The  general  effect  of  one,  I  must 
acknowledge,  is  seriously  damaged  by  the  presence 
of  their  Mummy. 

Dinky-Dunk  doubts  if  he'll  be  able  to  get  home  for 
the  holidays.  But  I  sent  him  a  box,  on  Saturday, 
made  up  of  those  things  which  he  likes  best  to  eat 
and  a  set  of  the  children's  pictures,  nicely  mounted. 
I've  also  had  Dinkie  and  Poppsy  write  a  long  letter 
to  their  dad,  a  task  which  they  performed  with  more 
constraint  than  I  had  anticipated.  I  had  my  own 
difficulties,  along  the  same  line,  for  I  had  taken  a 
photograph  of  poor  little  Pee-Wee's  grave  with  a 
snow-drift  across  one  end  of  it,  and  had  written  on 
the  bottom  of  the  mounting-card:  "We  must  remem 
ber."  But  as  I  stood  studying  this,  before  putting 
it  in  next  to  Poppsy's  huge  Christmas-card  gay  with 

248 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

powdered  mica  I  felt  a  foolish  tear  or  two  run  down 
my  cheek.  And  I  realized  it  would  never  do  to  cloud 
my  Dinky-Dunk's  day  with  memories  which  might  not 
be  altogether  happy.  So  I've  kept  the  picture  of  the 
little  white-fenced  bed  with  the  white  snowdrift  across 
its  foot.  .  .  . 

Susie  is  in  bed  with  a  bad  cold,  which  she  caught 
studying  astronomy  with  Gershom.  Poppsy  was  not 
in  the  least  put  out  when  she  watched  me  preparing 
a  mustard-plaster  for  the  invalid.  My  daughter,  I 
am  persuaded,  has  a  revived  faith  in  the  operation  of 
retributive  justice.  But  I  hope  Susie  is  better  by 
the  holiday.  Whinnie  has  the  Christmas  Tree  hidden 
away  in  the  stable,  and  already  a  number  of  mysteri 
ous  parcels  have  arrived  at  Casa  Grande.  Bud 
Teetzcl  very  gallantly  sent  me  over  a  huge  turkey,  an 
eighteen-pounder,  and  to-morrow  I  have  to  go  into 
Buckhorn  for  my  mail-order  shipments.  We  have 
decorated  the  house  with  a  whole  box  of  holly  from 
Victoria  and  I've  hung  a  sprig  of  mistletoe  in  the 
living-room  doorway.  The  children,  of  course,  are 
on  tiptoe  with  expectation.  But  I  can't  escape  the 
impression  that  I'm  merely  acting  a  part,  that  I'm  a 
Pagliacci  in  petticoats.  Heaven  knows  I  clown 
enough;  no  one  can  accuse  me  of  not  going  through 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

the  gestures.     But  it  seems  like  fox-trotting  along 
the  deck  of  a  sinking  ship. 

I  stood  under  the  mistletoe,  this  morning,  and 
dared  Gershom  to  kiss  me.  He  turned  quite  white 
and  made  for  the  door.  But  I  caught  him  by  the 
coat,  like  Potiphar's  wife,  and  pulled  him  back  to  the 
authorizing  berry-sprig  and  gave  him  a  brazen  big 
smack  on  the  cheek-bone.  He  turned  a  sunset  pink, 
at  that,  and  marched  out  of  the  room  without  saying 
a  word.  But  he  was  shaking  his  head  as  he  went,  at 
my  shamelessness,  I  suppose.  Poor  old  Gershom ! 
I  wish  there  were  more  men  in  the  world  like  him. 
The  other  day  Susie  intimated  that  he  was  too  homo 
sexual  and  that  it  was  the  polygamous  wretches  who 
really  kept  the  world  going.  But  I  refuse  to  sub 
scribe  to  that  sophomoric  philosophy  of  hers  which 
would  divide  the  race  into  fools  and  knaves.  "It's 
safer  being  sane  than  mad;  it's  better  being  good 
than  bad !"  as  Robert  remarked.  And  I  know  at  least 
one  strong  man  who  is  not  bad ;  and  one  bad  man  who 
is  not  strong. 


Tuesday  the  Twenty-Seventh 

THE  great  Day  has  come  and  gone.  And  I'm  not 
sorry.  There  was  a  cloud  over  my  heart  that  kept 
me  from  getting  the  happiness  out  of  it  I  ought.  I 
hoped  we  would  hear  from  Peter,  but  for  the  first 
time  in  history  he  overlooked  us. 

Dinky-Dunk,  as  he  had  warned  us,  could  not  get 
home  for  the  holidays.  But  he  surprised  me  by  send 
ing  a  really  wonderful  box  for  the  kiddies,  and  even 
a  gorgeous  silver-mounted  collar  for  Scotty.  Susie 
is  up  again,  but  she  is  still  feeling  a  bit  listless.  I 
heard  Gershom  informing  her  to-night  that  her  blood 
travels  at  the  rate  of  seven  miles  per  hour  and  that  if 
all  the  energy  of  Niagara  Falls  were  utilized  it  could 
supply  the  world  with  seven  million  horse-power.  I 
do  wish  Gershom  would  get  over  trying  to  pat  the 
world  on  the  head,  instead  of  shaking  hands  with  it! 
I'm  afraid  I'm  losing  my  lilt.  I  can't  understand 
why  I  should  keep  feeling  as  blue  as  indigo.  I  am 
a  well  of  acid  and  a  little  sister  to  the  crab-apple.  I 
think  I'll  make  Susie  come  down  so  we  can  humanize 

251 


252  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

ourselves  with  a  little  music.     For  I  feel  like  a  Marie 
Bashkirtseff  with  a  bilious  attack.   .    .    . 

Whinstane  Sandy  has  just  come  in  with  Peter's 
box,  two  days  late.  I  felt  sure  that  Peter  would  not 
utterly  forget  us.  There  is  still  a  great  deal  of 
shouting  down  in  the  kitchen,  where  that  most  mirac 
ulous  of  boxes  has  been  unpacked.  As  for  myself, 
I've  had  a  hankering  to  be  alone,  to  think  things  over. 
But  my  meditations  don't  seem  to  get  me  anywhere. 
.  .  .  Dinkie  has  just  come  up  to  show  me  his  brand- 
new  bridle  for  Buntie.  It  is  a  magnificent  bridle,  as 
shiny  and  jingly  as  any  lad  could  desire.  I  tried  to 
get  him  to  put  it  down,  so  that  I  could  draw  him  over 
close  to  me  and  talk  to  him.  But  Dinkie  is  too  excited 
for  any  such  demonstration.  He's  beginning,  I'm 
afraid,  to  consider  emotion  a  bit  unmanly.  He  seems 
to  be  losing  his  craving  to  be  petted  and  pampered. 
There  are  times,  I  can  see,  when  he  desires  his  fence- 
lines  to  be  respected. 


Sunday  the  Twenty-Ninth 

NEARLY  six  weeks,  I  notice,  have  slipped  by.  For 
a  month  and  a  half,  apparently,  the  impulse  to  air 
my  troubles  went  hibernating  with  the  bears.  Yet  it 
has  been  a  mild  winter,  so  far,  with  very  little  snow 
and  a  great  deal  of  sunshine — a  great  deal  of  sun 
shine  which  doesn't  elate  me  as  it  ought.  I  can't 
remember  who  it  was  said  a  happy  people  has  no  his 
tory.  But  that's  not  true  of  a  happy  woman.  It'a 
when  her  heart  is  full  that  she  makes  herself  heard, 
that  she  sings  like  a  lark  to  the  world.  When  she's 
wretched,  she  retires  with  her  grief.  .  .  . 

I  haven't  been  altogether  wretched,  it's  true,  just 
as  I  haven't  been  altogether  hilarious,  but  it  disturbs 
me  to  find  that  for  a  month  and  a  half  I  haven't 
written  a  line  in  this,  the  mottled  old  book  of  my  life. 
It's  not  that  the  last  month  or  two  has  been  empty, 
for  no  months  are  really  empty.  They  have  to  be 

253 


254  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

filled  with  something.  But  there  are  times,  I  suppose, 
when  lives  lie  fallow,  the  same  as  fields  lie  fallow,  times 
when  the  days  drag  like  harrow-teeth  across  the  per 
plexed  loam  of  our  soul  and  nothing  comes  of  it  at 
all.  Not,  I  repeat,  that  I  have  been  momentously 
unhappy.  It's  more  that  a  sort  of  sterilizing  indif- 
ferency  took  possession  of  me  and  made  the  little  ups 
and  downs  of  existence  as  unworthy  of  record  as  the 
ups  and  downs  of  the  waves  on  the  deadest  shores  of 
the  Dead  Sea.  It's  not  that  I'm  idle,  and  it's  not 
that  I'm  old,  and  it's  not  that  there's  anything  wrong 
with  this  disappointingly  healthy  body  of  mine.  But 
I  rather  think  I  need  a  change  of  some  kind.  I  even 
envy  Susie,  who  has  ambled  on  to  the  Coast  and  is  stay 
ing  with  the  Lougheeds  in  Victoria,  playing  golf  and 
picking  winter  roses  and  writing  back  about  her  trips 
up  Vancouver  Island  and  her  approaching  journey 
down  into  California. 

"What  do  we  know  of  the  New  World,"  she  paro 
died  in  her  last  letter  that  came  to  me,  "who  only  the 
old  East  know?"  Then  she  goes  on  to  say:  "I'm 
just  back  from  a  West  Coast  trip  on  the  roly-poly 
Maquinna  and  if  my  thoughts  go  wobbly  and  my 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 


255 


hand  goes  crooked  it's  because  my  head  is  so  prodi 
giously  full  of 

E  A  L  S 

A  L  M  O  N 

UNSETS 

TARS 

U  R  F 

OLANDER     ISLAND 

I WAS  HE  S 

AGHALIE  LAMONTIS 

KOOKUM  CHUCK 

E  A-LI  ON  S 

and  alas,  also  Seasickness,  that  I  can't  think 
straight !" 

Susie's  soul,  apparently,  has  had  the  dry-shampoo 
it  was  in  need  of.  But  as  for  me,  I'm  like  an  old 
horse-shoe  with  its  calks  worn  off.  The  Master- 
Blacksmith  of  Life  should  poke  me  deep  into  His  fires 
and  fling  me  on  His  anvil  and  make  me  over ! 

I've  been  worrying  about  my  Dinkie.  It's  all  so 
trivial,  in  a  way,  and  yet  I  can't  persuade  myself  it 
isn't  also  tragic.  He  told  Susie,  before  she  left,  that 
he  was  quite  willing  to  go  to  bed  a  little  earlier  one 


256  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

night,  because  then  "he  could  dream  about  Doreen. "" 
And  I  noticed,  not  long  ago,  that  instead  of  taking 
just  one  of  our  Newton  Pippins  to  school  with  him, 
he  had  formed  the  habit  of  taking  two.  On  making 
investigation,  I  discovered  that  this  second  apple 
ultimately  and  invariably  found  its  way  into  the 
hands  of  Mistress  Doreen  O'Lone.  And  last  week 
Dinkie  autocratically  commanded  Whinstane  Sandy 
to  hitch  Mudski  up  in  the  old  cutter,  to  go  sleigh- 
riding  with  the  lady  of  his  favor  to  the  Tcetzels* 
taffy-pull.  Dinkie's  mother  was  not  consulted  in  the 
matter — and  that  is  the  disturbing  feature  of  it  all. 
I  can't  help  remembering  what  Duncan  once  said 
about  my  boy  growing  out  of  my  reach.  If  I  ever 
lost  my  Dinkie  I  would  indeed  be  alone,  terribly  and 
hopelessly  alone. 


Wednesday  the  Eighth 

DINKIE,  who  has  been  disturbing  me  the  last  few 
days  by  going  about  with  an  air  of  suppressed  ex 
citement,  brought  my  anxiety  to  a  head  yesterday  by 
staring  into  my  face  and  then  saying: 

"Mummy,  I've  got  a  secret !" 

"What  secret?"  I  asked,  doing  my  best  to  appear 
indifferent. 

But  Dinkie  was  not  to  be  trapped. 

"It  wouldn't  be  a  secret,  if  I  told  you,"  he 
sagaciously  explained. 

I  studied  my  child  with  what  was  supposed  to  be 
a  reproving  eye. 

"You  mean  you  can't  even  tell  your  own  Mummy?" 
I  demanded. 

He  shook  his  head,  in  solemn  negation. 

"But  can  you,  some  day?"  I  pursued. 

He  thought  this  over. 

"Yes,  some  day,"  he  acknowledged,  squeezing  my 
knee. 

"How  long  will  I  have  to  wait?"  I  asked,  wonder- 
257 


258  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

ing  what  could  bring  such  a  rhapsodic  light  into  his 
hazel-specked  eye.  I  thought,  of  course,  of  Dorcen 
O'Lone.  And  I  wished  the  O'Lones  would  follow  in 
the  footsteps  of  so  many  other  successful  ranchers 
and  trek  off  to  California.  Then,  as  I  sat  studying 
Dinkie,  I  countermanded  that  wish.  For  its  fulfill 
ment  would  bring  loneliness  to  the  heart  of  my  laddie 
— and  loneliness  is  hell !  So,  instead,  I  struggled  as 
best  I  could  to  banish  all  thought  of  the  matter  from 
my  mind.  But  it  was  only  half  a  success.  I  remem 
bered  that  Gershom  himself  had  been  going  about  as 
abstracted  as  an  ant-eater  and  as  gloomy  as  a  crow, 
during  the  last  week;  and  I  kept  sniffing  something 
unpropitious  up-wind.  I  even  hoped  that  Dinkie 
would  return  to  the  subject,  as  children  with  a  secret 
have  the  habit  of  doing.  But  he  has  been  as  tight- 
lipped  on  the  matter  as  his  reticent  old  dad  might 
have  been. 


"Wednesday  the  Fifteenth 

I  GOT  an  altogether  unlooked-for  Valentine  yester 
day.  It  was  a  brief  but  a  significant  letter  from 
Dinky-Dunk,  telling  me  that  he  had  "taken  over"  th» 
Goodhue  house  in  Mount  Royal  and  asking  me  if  I 
intended  to  be  its  mistress.  He  has  bought  the  house, 
apparently,  completely  furnished  and  is  getting 
ready  to  move  into  it  the  first  week  in  March. 

The  whole  thing  has  rather  taken  my  breath  away. 
I  don't  object  to  an  ultimatum,  but  I  do  dislike  to 
have  it  come  like  a  bolt  from  the  blue.  I  have  arrived 
at  my  Rubicon,  all  right,  and  about  everything  that's 
left  of  my  life,  I  suppose,  will  hang  on  my  decision.  I 
don't  know  whether  to  laugh  or  to  cry,  to  be  horrified 
or  hilarious.  At  one  moment  I  have  a  tendency  to 
emulate  Marguerite  doing  the  Jewel-Song  in  Faust. 
"This  isn't  me!  This  isn't  me!"  I  keep  protesting  to 
myself.  But  Marguerite,  I  know,  would  never  be 
so  ungrammatical.  And  then  I  begin  to  foresee  dif 
ficulties.  The  mere  thought  of  leaving  Casa  Grande 
tears  my  heart.  When  we  go  away,  as  that  wise  man 

259 


260  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

of  Paris  once  said,  we  die  a  little.  This  will  always 
seem  my  home.  I  could  never  forsake  it  utterly.  I 
dread  to  forsake  it  for  even  a  portion  of  each  year. 
I  am  a  part  of  the  prairie,  now,  and  I  could  never 
be  entirely  happy  away  from  it.  And  to  accept  that 
challenge — for  however  one  may  look  at  it,  it  remains 
a  challenge — and  go  to  the  new  home  in  Calgary 
would  surely  be  another  concession.  And  I  have  been 
conceding,  conceding,  for  the  sake  of  my  children. 
How  much  more  can  I  concede? 

Yet,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  I  am  one  of  a  fam 
ily.  I  am  not  a  free  agent.  I  am  chained  to  the  oar 
for  life.  When  we  link  up  with  the  race  we  have  more 
than  the  little  ring  of  our  own  Ego  to  remember.  It 
is  not,  as  Dinky-Dunk  once  pointed  out  to  me,  a  good 
thing  to  get  "Indianized."  We  have  our  community 
obligations  and  they  must  be  faced.  The  children, 
undoubtedly,  would  have  advantages  in  the  city.  And 
to  find  my  family  reunited  would  be  "le  desir  de 
paraitre."  But  I  can't  help  remembering  how  much 
there  is  to  remember.  I'm  humbler  now,  it's  true, 
than  I  once  was.  I  no  longer  say  "One  side,  please !" 
to  life,  while  life,  like  old  Major  Elmes  on  Murray 
Hill,  declines  to  vary  its  course  for  one  small  and 
piping  voice.  Instead  of  getting  gangway,  I  find, 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  261 

I'm  apt  to  get  an  obliterating  thump  on  the  spine. 
Heaven  knows,  I  want  to  do  the  right  thing.  But 
the  issue  seems  so  hopelessly  tangled.  I  have  brooded 
over  it  and  I  have  even  prayed  over  it.  But  it  all 
seems  to  come  to  nothing.  I  sometimes  nurse  a 
ghostly  sort  of  hope  that  it  may  be  taken  out  of  my 
hands,  that  some  power  outside  myself  may  intervene 
to  decide.  For  it  impresses  me  as  ominous  that  I 
should  be  able  to  hesitate  at  such  a  time,  when  a 
woman,  for  once  in  her  life,  should  know  her  own 
mind,  should  see  her  own  fixed  goal  and  fight  her  way 
to  it.  I've  been  wondering  if  I  haven't  ebbed  away 
into  that  half-warm  impersonality  which  used  to  im 
press  me  as  the  last  stage  in  moral  deca}'. 

But  I'm  not  the  fishy  type  of  woman.  I  kitoAV  I'm 
not.  And  I'm  not  a  hard-head.  I've  always  had  a 
horror  of  being  hard,  for  fear  my  hardness  might  in 
some  way  be  passed  on  to  my  Dinkie.  I  want  to  keep 
my  boy  kindly  and  considerate  of  others,  and  loyal 
to  the  people  who  love  him.  But  I  balk  at  that  word 
"loyal."  For  if  I  expect  loyalty  in  my  offspring  I 
surely  must  have  it  myself.  And  I  stood  up  before  a 
minister  of  God,  not  so  many  years  ago,  and  took  an 
oath  to  prove  loyal  to  my  husband,  to  cleave  to  him 
in  sickness  and  in  health.  I  also  took  an  oath  to 


262  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

honor  him.  But  he  has  made  that  part  of  the  com 
pact  almost  impossible.  And  my  children,  if  I  go 
back  to  him,  will  come  under  his  influence.  And  I 
can't  help  questioning  whaf  that  influence  will  be. 
I  have  only  one  life  to  live  And  I  have  a  human 
anxiety  to  get  out  of  it  all  that  is  coming  to  me.  I 
even  feel  that  it  owes  me  something,  that  there  are 
certain  arrears  of  happiness  to  be  made  up. ...  I 
wish  I  had  a  woman,  older  and  wiser  than  myself,  to 
talk  things  over  with.  I  have  had  the  impulse  to 
write  to  Peter,  and  tell  him  everything,  and  ask  him 
what  I  ought  to  do.  But  that  doesn't  impress  me  as 
being  quite  fair  to  Peter.  And,  oddly  enough,  it 
doesn't  impress  me  as  being  quite  fair  to  Dinky- 
Dunk.  So  I'm  going  to  wait  a  week  or  two  and  let 
the  cream  of  conviction  rise  on  the  pan  of  indecision. 
There's  a  tiny  parliament  of  angels,  in  the  inner 
chambers  of  our  heart,  who  talk  these  things  over  and 
decide  them  while  we  sleep. 


Friday  the  Seventeenth 

WE  had  to  dig  in,  like  bears,  for  two  whole  days 
while  the  first  real  snow-storm  of  the  winter  raged 
outside.  But  the  skies  have  cleared,  the  wind  has 
gone,  and  the  weather  is  crystal-clear  again.  Dinkie 
and  Poppsy,  furred  to  the  cars,  are  out  on  the  drifts 
learning  to  use  the  snow-shoes  which  Percy  and  Olga 
sent  down  to  them  for  Christmas.  Dinkie  has  made 
himself  a  spear  by  lashing  his  broken-bladed  jack- 
knife  to  the  handle  of  my  headless  dutch-hoe  and  has 
converted  himself  into  a  stealthy  Iluit  stalking  a 
polar  bear  in  the  form  of  poor  old  Scotty,  who  can't 
quite  understand  why  he  is  being  driven  so  relent 
lessly  from  crevice  to  Arctic  crevice.  They  have  also 
built  an  igloo,  and  indulged  in  what  is  apparently 
marriage  by  capture,  with  the  reluctant  bride  making 
her  repeated  escape  by  floundering  over  drifts  piled 
even  higher  than  the  fence-tops.  It  makes  me  hanker 
to  get  my  own  snow-shoes  on  my  moccasined  feet 
again  and  go  trafficking  over  that  undulating  white 
world  of  snow,  where  barb-wire  means  no  more  than 

263 


264  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

a  line-fence  in  Noah's  Flood.  No  one  could  remain 
morose,  in  weather  like  this.  You  must  dress  for  it, 
of  course,  since  that  arching  blue  sky  has  sword- 
blades  of  cold  sheathed  in  its  velvety  soft  azure.  But 
it  goes  to  your  head,  like  wine,  and  you  wonder  what 
makes  you  feel  that  life  is  so  well  worth  living. 


Tuesday,  the  Twenty-First 

THE  armistice  continues.  And  I  continue  to  sit  on 
my  keg  of  powder  and  sing  "0  Sole  Mio"  to  the 
northern  moon. 

I  have  had  Whinstane  Sandy  build  a  toboggan- 
slide  out  of  the  old  binder-shed,  which  has  been  pretty 
well  blown  to  pieces  by  last  summer's  wind-storms. 
He  picked  out  the  soundest  of  the  two-by-fours  and 
made  a  framework  which  he  boarded  over  with  the 
best  of  the  weather-bleached  old  siding.  For  when 
you  haven't  the  luxury  of  a  hill  on  your  landscape, 
you  can  at  least  make  an  imitation  one.  Whinnie 
even  planed  the  board- joints  in  the  center  of  the  run 
way  and  counter-sunk  every  nail-head — and  cussed 
volubly  when  he  pounded  his  heavily  mittened  thumb 
with  the  hammer.  The  finished  structure  could  hardly 
be  called  a  thing  of  beauty.  We  have  only  one  of  the 
stable-ladders  to  mount  it  from  the  rear,  and  instead 
of  toboggans  we  have  only  Poppsy's  home-made 
hand-sleigh  and  Dinkie's  somewhat  dilapidated  "flex 
ible  coaster."  But  when  water  had  been  carried  out 

265 


266  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

to  that  smooth  runway  and  the  boards  had  been 
coated  with  ice,  like  brazil-nuts  glace,  and  the  snow 
along  the  lower  course  had  been  well  packed  down,  it 
at  least  gave  you  a  run  for  your  money. 

The  tiptop  point  of  the  slide  couldn't  have  been 
much  more  than  fourteen  or  fifteen  feet  above  the 
prairie-floor,  but  it  seemed  perilous  enough  when  I 
tried  it  out — much  to  the  perturbation  of  Whinstane 
Sandy — by  lying  stomach-down  on  Dinkie's  coaster 
and  letting  myself  shoot  along  that  well-iced  incline. 
It  was  a  kingly  sensation,  that  of  speed  wedded  to 
danger,  and  it  took  me  back  to  Davos  at  a  breath. 
Then  I  tried  it  with  Dinkie,  and  then  with  Poppsy, 
and  then  with  Poppsy  and  Dinkie  together.  We  had 
some  grand  old  tumbles,  in  the  loose  snow,  and  some 
unmentionable  bruises,  before  we  became  sufficiently 
expert  to  tool  our  sleigh-runners  along  their  proper 
trail.  But  it  was  good  fun.  The  excitement  of  the 
thing,  in  fact,  rather  got  into  my  blood.  In  half  an 
hour  the  three  of  us  were  covered  with  snow,  were 
shouting  like  Comanches,  and  were  having  an  alto 
gether  wild  time  of  it.  There  was  climbing  enough 
to  keep  us  warm,  for  all  the  sub-zero  weather,  and  I 
was  finally  allowed  to  escape  to  the  house  only  on  the 
promise  that  I  risk  my  neck  again  on  the  morrow. 


Friday  the  Twenty-Fourth 

MY  Dinkie's  secret  is  no  longer  a  secret.  It 
divulged  itself  to  me  to-day  with  the  suddenness  of 
a  thunder-clap.  Peter  Ketley  has  been  back  at 
Alabama  Ranch  for  nearly  three  weeks. 

I  was  out  with  the  kiddies  this  afternoon,  having 
another  wild  time  on  the  toboggan-slide,  dressed  in  an 
old  Mackinaw  of  Dinky-Dunk's  buckled  in  close 
around  my  waist  and  a  pair  of  Whinnie's  heaviest 
woolen  socks  over  my  moccasins  and  a  mangy  old 
gray-squirrel  cap  on  by  head.  The  children  looked 
like  cherubs  who'd  been  rolled  in  a  flour-barrel,  with 
their  eyes  shining  and  their  cheeks  glowing  like  Rich 
mond  roses,  but  I  must  have  looked  like  something 
that  had  been  put  out  to  frighten  the  coyotes  away. 
At  any  rate,  there  we  were,  all  squealing  like  pigs  and 
all  powdered  from  tip  to  toe  with  the  dry  snow  and 
all  looking  like  Piutes  on  the  war-path.  And  who 
should  walk  calmly  about  the  corner  of  the  buildings 
but  Peter  himself ! 

My  heart  stopped  beating  and  I  had  to  lean 
267 


268  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

against  the  end  of  the  toboggan-slide  until  I  could 
catch  my  breath. 

He  called  out,  "Hello,  youngsters !"  as  quietly  as 
though  he  had  seen  us  all  the  day  before.  I  said 
"Peter!"  in  a  strangled  sort  of  whisper,  and  won 
dered  what  made  my  knees  wabble  as  I  stood  staring 
at  him  as  though  he  had  been  a  ghost. 

But  Peter  was  no  ghost.  He  was  there  before  me, 
in  the  body,  still  smoking  his  foolish  little  pipe,  wear 
ing  the  familiar  old  coonskin  cap  and  coat  that 
looked  as  though  the  moths  had  made  many  a  Roman 
holiday  of  their  generously  deforested  pelt.  He  took 
the  pipe  out  of  his  mouth  as  he  stepped  over  to  me, 
and  pulled  off  his  heavy  old  gauntlet  before  he  shook 
hands. 

"Peter !"  I  repeated  in  my  ridiculous  small  whisper. 

He  didn't  speak.  But  he  smiled,  a  bit  wistfully  r 
as  he  stared  down  at  me.  And  for  just  a  moment,  I 
think,  an  odd  look  of  longing  came  into  his  searching 
honest  eyes  which  studied  my  face  as  though  he  were 
counting  every  freckle  and  line  and  eyelash  there. 
He  continued  to  X-ray  me  with  that  hungry  stare  of 
his  until  I  took  my  hand  away  and  could  feel  the 
blood  surging  back  to  my  face. 

"It's  a  long  time,"  he  said  as  he  puffed  hard  on  his 
pipe,  apparently  to  keep  it  from  going  out.  The 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  269 

sound  of  his  voice  sent  a  little  thrill  through  my 
body.  I  felt  as  rattle-headed  as  a  rabbit,  and  was 
glad  when  Dinkie  and  Poppsy  captured  him  by  each 
knee  and  hung  on  like  catamounts. 

"Where  did  you  come  from?"  I  finally  asked,  try 
ing  in  vain  to  be  as  collected  as  Peter  himself. 

Then  he  told  me.  He  told  me  as  nonchalantly  as 
though  he  were  giving  me  a  piece  of  news  of  no  par 
ticular  interest.  He  had  rather  a  difficult  book  to 
finish  up,  and  he  concluded  the  quietness  of  Alabama 
Ranch  would  suit  him  to  a  T.  And  when  spring  came 
he  wanted  to  have  a  look  about  for  a  nest  of  the 
whooping  crane.  It  has  been  rather  a  rarity,  for 
some  sixteen  or  seventeen  years,  this  whooping  crane, 
and  the  American  Museum  was  offering  a  mighty 
handsome  prize  for  a  specimen.  Then  he  was  com 
pelled  to  give  his  attention  to  Dinkie  and  Poppsy, 
and  tried  the  slide  a  couple  of  times,  and  announced 
that  our  coaster  was  better  than  the  chariot  of 
Icarius.  And  by  this  time  I  had  recovered  my  wits 
and  my  composure  and  got  some  of  the  snow  off  my 
Mackinaw. 

"Have  I  changed?"  I  asked  Peter  as  he  turned  to 
study  my  face  for  the  second  time. 

"To  me,"  he  said  as  he  brushed  the  snow  from  his 
gauntlets,  "you  are  always  adorable !" 


270  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"Verboten!"  I  retorted  to  that,  wondering  why 
anything  so  foolish  could  have  the  power  to  make  my 
pulses  sing. 

"Why?"  he  asked,  as  his  eyes  met  mine. 

"For  the  same  old  reason,"  I  told  him. 

"Reasons,"  he  said,  "are  like  shoes :  Time  has  the 
trick  of  wearing  them  out." 

"When  that  happens,  we  have  to  get  new  ones,"  I 
reminded  him. 

"Then  what  is  the  new  one?"  he  asked,  with  an 
unexpectedly  solemn  look  on  his  face. 

"My  husband  has  just  asked  me  to  join  him  in 
Calgary,"  I  said,  releasing  my  bolt. 

"Are  you  going  to  ?"  he  asked,  with  his  face  a  mask. 

"I  think  I  am,"  I  told  him.  For  I  could  see,  now, 
how  Peter's  return  had  simplified  the  situation  by 
complicating  it.  Already  he  had  made  my  course 
plainer  to  me.  I  could  foresee  what  this  new  factor 
would  imply.  I  could  understand  what  Peter's  pres 
ence  at  Alabama  Ranch  would  come  to  mean.  And 
I  had  to  shut  my  eyes  to  the  prospect.  I  was  still 
the  same  old  single-track  woman  with  a  clear-cut  duty 
laid  out  before  her.  There  were  certain  luxuries,  for 
the  sake  of  my  own  soul's  peace,  I  could  never  afford. 

"Why   are   you   going  back   to   your   husband?" 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  271 

Peter  was  asking,  with  real  perplexity  on  his  face. 

"Because  he  needs  me,"  I  said  as  I  stood  watching 
the  children  go  racing  down  the  slide. 

"Why?"  he  asked,  with  what  impressed  me  as  his 
first  touch  of  harshness. 

"Must  I  explain?"  I  inquired  with  my  own  first 
movement  in  self-defense,  for  it  had  suddenly  oc 
curred  to  me  that  any  such  explaining  would  be  much 
more  difficult  than  I  dreamed. 

"Of  course  not,"  said  Peter,  changing  color  a 
little.  "It's  only  that  I'm  so  tremendously  anxious 
to — to  understand." 

"To  understand  what  ?"  I  questioned,  both  hoping 
and  dreading  that  he  would  go  on  to  the  bitter  end. 

"That  you  understand,"  was  his  cryptic  retort. 
And  for  once  in  his  life  Peter  disappointed  me. 

"I  can't  afford  to,"  I  said  with  an  effort  at  light 
ness  which  seemed  to  hurt  him  more  than  it  ought. 
Then  I  realized,  as  I  stood  looking  up  into  his  face, 
that  I  was  doing  little  to  merit  that  humble  and  mag 
nificent  loyalty  of  Peter's.  He  would  play  fair  to 
the  end.  He  was  too  big  of  heart  to  think  first  of 
himself.  It  was  me  he  was  thinking  of ;  it  was  me  he 
wanted  to  see  happy.  But  I  had  my  own  road  to  go, 
and  no  outsider  could  guide  me. 


272  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"It's  no  use,  Peter,"  I  said  as  I  put  my  mittened 
hand  on  his  gauntleted  arm  without  quite  knowing 
I  was  doing  it.  And  I  went  on  to  warn  him  that  he 
must  not  confront  me  with  kindness,  that  I  was  a 
good  deal  like  an  Indian's  dog  which  neither  looks  for 
kindness  nor  understands  it.  He  laughed  a  trifle 
bitterly  at  that  and  reminded  me,  as  he  stood  staring 
at  me,  of  a  Pribilof  seal  staring  into  an  Arctic  sun. 
Then  he  said  an  odd  thing.  "I  wish  I  could  make  it 
a  bit  easier  for  you,"  he  remarked  as  impersonally  as 
though  he  were  meditating  aloud. 

I  asked  him  why  he  said  that.  He  evasively  ex 
plained  that  he  thought  it  was  because  I  had  what  the 
Romans  called  constantia.  So  I  asked  him  to  explain 
constantia.  And  he  said,  with  a  shrug,  that  we  might 
regard  it  as  firm  consideration  of  a  question  before 
acting  on  it.  I  explained,  at  that,  that  it  wasn't  a 
matter  of  choice,  but  of  character.  He  was  willing 
to  acknowledge  that  I  was  right.  But  before  that 
altogether  unsatisfactory  little  debate  was  over  Peter 
made  me  promise  him  one  thing.  He  has  made  me 
promise  that  before  I  leave  we  have  a  tramp  over  the 
prairie  together.  And  we  have  agreed  that  Sunday 
would  be  as  good  a  day  as  any. 


Saturday  the  Twenty-Fifth 

I  HAVE  sent  word  to  Duncan  to  expect  me  in  Cal 
gary  as  soon  as  I  can  get  things  ready.  My  decision 
is  made.  And  it  is  final.  Two  ghostly  hands  have 
reached  out  and  turned  me  toward  my  husband.  One 
is  the  Past.  The  other  is  the  Proprieties.  If  life 
out  here  were  a  little  more  like  the  diamond-dyed 
Westerns,  Peter  Ketley  and  Duncan  McKail  would 
fight  with  hammerless  Colts,  the  victor  would  throw 
me  over  the  horn  of  his  saddle,  and  vanish  in  a  cloud 
of  dust,  while  Struthers  was  turning  Casa  Grande 
into  a  faro-hall  and  my  two  kiddies  were  busy  holding 
up  the  Elk  Crossing  stage-coach. 

But  life,  alas,  isn't  so  dramatic  as  we  dream  it.  It 
cross-hobbles  us  and  hog-ties  us  and  leaves  us  afraid 
of  our  own  wilted  impulses.  I  have  a  terror  of  fail 
ure.  And  it's  plain  enough  I  have  only  one  mission 
on  God's  green  footstool.  I'm  a  home-maker,  and 
nothing  more.  I'm  a  home-maker  confronted  by  the 
last  chance  to  make  good  at  my  one  and  only  calling. 

273 


S74  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

And  whatever  it  costs,  I'm  going  to  make  my 
husband  recognize  me  as  a  patient  and  long-suffering 
Penelope. .  .  . 

But  enough  of  the  rue!  To-morrow  I'm  going 
snow-shoeing  with  Peter.  I'm  praying  that  the 
weather  will  be  propitious.  I  want  one  of  our  spar 
kling-burgundy  days  with  the  sun  shining  bright  and 
a  nip  in  the  air  like  a  stiletto  buried  in  rose  leaves. 
For  it  may  be  the  last  time  in  all  my  life  I  shall  walk 
on  the  prairie  with  my  friend,  Peter  Ketley.  The 
page  is  going  to  be  turned  over,  the  candle  snuffed 
out,  and  the  singing  birds  of  my  freedom  silenced. 
I  have  met  my  Rubicon,  and  it  must  be  crossed.  But 
last  night,  for  the  first  time  in  a  month,  I  plastered 
enough  cold  cream  on  my  nose  to  make  me  look  like  a 
buttered  muffin,  and  rubbed  enough  almond-oil  meal 
on  my  arms  to  make  them  look  like  a  miller's.  And 
I've  been  asking  myself  if  I'm  the  sedate  old  lady  life 
has  been  trying  to  make  me.  There  are  certain 
Pacific  Islands,  Gershom  tells  me,  where  the  climate 
is  so  stable  that  the  matter  of  weather  is  never  even 
mentioned,  where  the  people  who  bathe  in  that  eternal 
calm  are  never  conscious  of  the  conditions  surrounding 
them.  That's  the  penalty,  I  suppose,  that  humanity 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  275 

pays  for  constancy.  There  are  no  lapses  to  record, 
no  deviations  to  be  accounted  for,  no  tempests  to 
send  us  tingling  into  the  shelters  of  wonder.  And  I 
can't  yet  be  quite  sure  whether  this  rebellious  old 
heart  of  mine  wants  to  be  a  Pacific  Islander  or  not. 


Monday  tJie  Twenty-Seventh 

PETER  and  I  have  had  our  tramp  in  the  snow.  It 
wasn't  a  sunny  day,  as  I  had  hoped.  It  was  one  of 
those  intensely  cold  northern  days  without  wind  or 
sun,  one  of  those  misted  days  which  Balzac  somewhere 
describes  as  a  beautiful  woman  born  blind.  It  was 
fifty-three  below  zero  when  we  left  the  house,  with  the 
smoke  going  up  in  the  gray  air  as  straight  and  undis 
turbed  as  a  pine-tree  and  the  drifts  crunching  like 
dry  charcoal  under  our  snow-shoes.  We  were  wool- 
ened  and  mittened  and  capped  and  furred  up  to  the 
eyes,  however,  and  I  was  warmer  than  I've  been  many 
a  time  on  Boston  Common  in  March,  even  though 
we  did  look  like  a  couple  of  deep-sea  divers  and 
steamed  like  fire-engines  when  we  breathed. 

We  tramped  until  we  were  tired,  swung  back  to 
Casa  Grande,  and  Peter  came  in  for  a  cup  of  tea 
and  then  trudged  off  to  Alabama  Ranch  again.  And 
that  was  the  lee  and  the  long  of  it,  as  the  Irish  say. 
What  did  we  talk  about?  Heaven  knows  what  we 

276 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  277 

didn't  talk  about !  Peter  told  me  about  a  rancher 
named  Bidwell,  north  of  The  Crossing,  being  found 
frozen  to  death  in  a  snow-drift,  frozen  stiff,  with  the 
horse  still  standing  and  the  rider  still  sitting  upright 
in  the  saddle.  He  said  there  was  a  lot  of  rot  talked 
about  the  great  clean  outdoors.  The  sentimentalists 
found  that  they  naturally  felt  a  bit  niftier  in  fresh 
air,  but  the  great  outdoors,  according  to  Peter,  is  an 
arena  of  endless  murder  and  rapine  and  warfare,  and 
the  cleanest  acre  of  forest  or  prairie  under  the  sun 
somewhere  has  its  stains  of  blood  and  its  record  of 
cruelty.  We  talked  about  Susie  and  the  negative 
phrasing  of  the  ten  moral  laws  and  the  Horned  Dino 
saur  from  Sand  Hill  Creek  (whose  bones  Peter  reck 
oned  to  be  at  least  three  million  years  old)  and  the 
marriage  customs  of  the  Innuits.  And  we  talked 
about  Matzenauer  and  Kreisler  and  the  best  cure  for 
chilblains  and  about  Gcrshom  and  Poppsy  and 
Dinkie — but  most  of  all  about  Dinkie. 

Peter  asked  me  if  I'd  seen  Dinkie's  school  essays 
on  The  Flag  and  The  Capture  of  Quebec,  and  rather 
surprised  me  by  handing  over  crumpled  copies  of  the 
same,  Dinkie  having  proudly  despatched  these  mas 
terpieces  all  the  way  to  Philadelphia  for  his  "Uncle 


278  THE     tPRAIRIE     CHILD 

Peter's"  approval.  It  hurt  me,  for  just  one  foolish 
fraction  of  a  second,  to  think  my  boy  had  confidences 
with  an  outsider  which  he  could  not  have  with  his  own 
mother.  And  then  I  remembered  that  Peter  wasn't 
an  outsider.  I  realized  how  much  he  had  brought 
into  my  laddie's  life,  how  much,  in  a  different  way,  he 
had  brought  into  my  own.  I  even  tried  to  tell  him 
about  this.  But  he  stopped  me  short  by  saying 
something  in  Latin  which  he  later  explained  meant 
"by  taking  the  middle  course  we  shall  not  go  amiss." 
So  I  came  back  to  Casa  Grande,  not  exactly  with  a 
feeling  of  frustration,  but  with  a  feeling  of  possi 
bilities  withheld  and  issues  deferred.  It  was  a  com 
panionable  enough  tramp,  I  suppose.  But  I'm  afraid 
I  was  a  disappointment  to  Peter.  His  gaiety  im 
pressed  me  as  a  bit  forced..  I  am  slightly  mystified 
by  his  refusal,  while  taking  serious  things  seriously, 
to  take  anything  tragically.  Even  at  tea,  with  all 
its  air  of  the  valedictory  hanging  over  us,  he  was 
nice  and  gay,  like  the  Christmas  beeves  the  city 
butchers  stick  paper  rosettes  into,  or  the  circus-band 
playing  like  mad  while  the  tumbler  who  has  had  a 
fall  is  being  carried  out  to  the  dressing-tent.  Peter 
even  offhandedly  inquired,  as  he  was  going,  if  he 
might  have  Scotty  to  take  care  of,  provided  it  was 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  279 

not  expedient  to  take  Dinkie's  dog  along  to  Calgary 
with  us  ...  I'm  not  quite  certain — I  may  be  wrong, 
but  there  are  moments,  odd  earthquakey  moments, 
when  I  have  a  suspicion  that  Peter  will  be  keeping 
more  than  Scotty  after  we've  trekked  off  to  Calgary ! 


Saturday  the  Fourth 

THIS  tearing  up  of  roots  is  a  much  sorrier  busi 
ness  than  I  had  imagined.  And  more  difficult.  I 
find  it  hard  to  know  what  to  take  and  what  to  leave 
behind.  And  there  is  so  much  to  be  thought  of,  so 
much  to  be  arranged  for,  so  much  to  be  done.  I  have 
had  to  write  Duncan  and  tell  him  I'll  be  a  few  days 
later  than  I  intended.  My  biggest  problem  has  been 
with  Whinstane  Sandy  and  Struthers.  I  called  them 
in  and  had  a  talk  with  them  and  told  them  I  wanted 
them  to  keep  Casa  Grande  going  the  same  as  ever. 
Then  I  made  myself  into  the  god  from  the  machine 
by  calmly  announcing  the  only  way  things  could  be 
arranged  would  be  for  the  two  of  them  to  get  mar 
ried. 

Struthers,  at  this  suggestion,  promptly  became  as 
coy  as  a  partridge-hen.  Whinnie,  of  course,  remained 
Scottish  and  canny.  He  became  more  shrewdly  mag 
nanimous,  however,  after  we'd  had  a  bit  of  talk  by 
ourselves.  "Weel,  I'll  tak'  the  woman,  rather  than 
see  her  frettin'  hersel'  to  death!"  he  finally  con- 

280 


281 

ceded,  knowing  only  too  well  he'd  nest  warm  and  live 
well  for  the  rest  of  his  days.  He'd  been  hoping,  he 
confessed  to  me,  that  some  day  he'd  get  back  to  that 
claim  of  his  up  in  the  Klondike.  But  he  wasn't 
so  young  as  he  once  was.  And  perhaps  Dinkie,  when 
he  was  grown  to  a  man,  could  go  up  and  look  after 
his  rights.  'Twould  be  a  grand  journey,  he  averred 
with  a  sigh,  for  a  high-spirited  lad  turned  twenty. 

"I'll  be  stayin'  with  Pee-Wee  and  the  old  place 
here,"  concluded  Whinstane  Sandy,  giving  me  his 
rough  old  hand  as  a  pledge.  And  with  tears  in  my 
eyes  I  lifted  that  faithful  old  hand  up  to  my  lips  and 
kissed  it.  Whinnie,  I  knew,  would  die  for  me.  But 
he  would  pass  away  before  he'd  be  willing  to  put  his 
loyalty  and  his  courage  and  his  kind-heartedness  into 
pretty  speeches.  Struthers,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
become  too  flighty  to  be  of  much  use  to  me  in  my 
packing.  She  has  plunged  headlong  into  a  riot  of 
baking,  has  sent  for  a  fresh  supply  of  sage  tea,  and 
is  secretly  perusing  a  dog-eared  volume  which  I  have 
reason  to  know  is  The  Marriage  Guide. 

Gershom,  all  things  considered,  is  the  most  dolor 
ous  member  of  our  home  circle.  He  says  little,  but 
inspects  me  with  the  wounded  eyes  of  a  neglected 
spaniel.  He  will  stay  on  at  Casa  Grande  until  the 


282  THE    'PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Easter  holidays,  and  then  migrate  to  the  Teetzels'. 
As  for  Dinkie  and  Poppsy,  they  are  too  young  to 
understand.  The  thought  of  change  excites  them, 
but  they  have  no  idea  of  what  they  are  leaving  be 
hind. 

Last  night,  when  I  was  dog-tired  after  my  long 
day's  work,  I  remembered  about  Dinkic's  school- 
essays  and  took  them  out  to  read.  And  having  done 
so,  I  realized  there  was  something  sacred  about  them. 
They  gave  me  a  glimpse  of  a  groping  young  soul 
reaching  up  toward  the  light. 

"We  have  a  Flag,"  I  read,  "to  thrill  our  bones 
and  be  prod  of  and  no  man  boy  woman  or  girl"  (and 
the  not  altogether  artless  diminuendo  did  not  escape 
me !)  "should  never  let  it  drag  in  the  dust.  It  flotes 
at  the  bow  of  our  ships  and  waves  from  the  top  of 
most  post  offices  etc.  And  now  we  have  a  flag  and  a 
flag  staf  in  front  of  our  school  and  on  holdays  and 
when  every  grate  man  dies  we  put  said  flag  up  at  haf 
mast  ...  It  is  the  flag  of  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the 
flag  of  our  country  which  all  of  whose  citizens  have 
a  right  to  fly,  the  hig"  (obviously  meant  for  high) 
"and  the  low,  the  rich  and  the  poor.  And  we  must 
not  only  keep  our  flag  but  blazen  it  still  further  with 
deeds  nobely  done.  If  ever  you  have  to  shed  your 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  283 

blood  for  your  country  remeber  its  for  the  nobelest 
flag  that  flies  the  same  being  an  cmblen  of  our  native 
land  to  which  it  represens  and  stands  in  high  esteem 
by  the  whole  people  of  a  country."  .  .  .  God  bless 
his  patriotic  little  bones !  My  bairn  knew  what  he 
was  trying  to  get  at,  but  it's  plain  he  didn't  quite 
know  how  to  get  there. 

But  the  drama  of  the  Capture  of  Quebec  plainly 
put  him  on  easier  ground.  For  here  was  a  story 
worth  the  telling.  And  what  could  be  more  glorious 
than  the  death  of  Wolfe  as  I  see  it  through  my  little 
Dinkie's  eyes? 

For  I  read:  "The  french  said  Wolfe"  (can  has  first 
been  written  and  then  scratched  out  and  would  sub 
stituted)  "never  get  up  that  rivver  but  Wolfe  fooled 
them  with  a  trick  by  running  the  french  flag  up  on 
his  shipps  so  the  french  pilots  without  fear  padled 
out  and  come  abord  when  Wolfe  took  them  prissoners 
and  made  them  pilot  the  english  ships  safe  to  the 
iland  of  Orlens.  He  wanted  to  capsture  the  city  of 
Quebec  without  distroiting  it.  But  the  clifs  were  to 
high  and  the  brave  Montcalm  dified  Wolfe  who  lost 
400  men  and  got  word  Amherst  could  not  come  and 
so  himself  took  sick  and  went  to  bed.  But  a  desserter 
from  the  french  gave  Wolfe  the  pass  word  and  when 


284  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

his  ships  crept  further  up  the  rivver  in  the  dark  a 
french  scnntry  called  out  qui  vive  and  one  of  Wolfe's 
men  who  spoke  french  well  ansered  la  france  and  the 
senntry  said  to  himself  they  was  french  ships  and  let 
them  go  on.  Next  day  Wolfe  was  better  and  saw  a 
goat  clime  up  the  clifs  near  the  plains  of  Abraham 
and  said  where  a  goat  could  go  he  could  go  to.  So 
he  forgot  being  sick  and  desided  to  clime  up  Wolfe's 
cove  which  was  not  then  called  that  until  later.  It 
was  a  dark  night  and  they  went  in  row  boats  with  all 
the  oars  mufled.  It  was  a  formadible  sight  that 
would  have  made  even  bolder  men  shrink  with  fear. 
But  it  was  the  brave  Higlanders  who  lead  with  their 
muskits  straped  to  their  sholdiers  climing  up  the 
steep  rock  by  grabbing  at  roots  of  trees  and  shrubbs 
and  not  a  word  was  wispered  but  the  french  senntrys 
saw  the  tree  moving  and  asked  qui  vive  again.  The 
same  sholdier  who  once  studdied  hard  and  lernt 
french  said  la  france  as  he  had  done  before  and  they 
got  safe  to  the  top  and  faced  the  city.  At  brake  of 
day  they  stood  face  to  face,  french  and  english.  But 
Montcalm  marched  out  to  cut  them  off  there  and 
Wolfe  lined  his  men  up  in  a  line  and  said  hold  your 
fire  until  they  are  within  forty  paces  away  from  us. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  285 

The  french  caused  many  causilties  but  the  english 
never  wavered.  Montcalm  still  on  horse  back  reseaved 
a  mortal  wound,  he  would  of  fell  off  if  two  of  his  tall 
granadeers  hadn't  held  him  up  and  Wolfe  too  was 
shot  on  the  wirst  but  went  right  on.  Again  he  was 
shot  this  time  more  fataly  and  as  they  were  laying 
him  down  one  of  the  men  exclaimed  See  how  they  run. 
Who  run  murmurred  the  dicing  Wolfe.  The  enemy 
sir  replied  the  man.  Then  I  die  happy  said  Generral 
Wolfe  and  with  a  great  sigh  rolled  over  on  his  side 
and  died  .  .  .  And  when  the  doctor  told  Montcalm 
he  could  only  live  a  few  hours  he  said  God  be  prased  I 
shall  not  live  to  see  Quebec  fall.  Brave  words  like 
those  should  not  be  forgoten  and  what  Wolfe  said 
was  just  as  brave.  No  more  fiting  words  could  be 
said  by  anybody  than  those  he  said  in  the  boats  with 
the  mufled  oars  that  night  that  the  paths  of  glory 
leed  but  to  the  grave.''  .  .  . 

I  have  folded  up  the  carefully  written  pages, 
reverently,  remembering  my  promise  to  return  them 
to  Peter.  But  for  a  while  at  least  I  shall  keep  them 
with  me.  They  have  set  me  thinking,  reminding  me 
how  time  flies.  Here  is  my  little  boy,  grown  into  an 
historian,  sagely  philosophizing  over  the  tragedies  of 


286  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

life.  My  wee  laddie,  expressing  himself  through  the 
recorded  word  ...  It  seems  such  a  short  time  ago 
that  he  was  taking  his  first  stumbling  steps  along  the 
dim  hallways  of  language.  I  have  been  turning  back 
to  the  journal  I  began  shortly  after  his  birth  and  kept 
up  for  so  long,  the  nai've  journal  of  a  young  mother 
registering  her  wonder  at  the  unfolding  mysteries  of 
life.  It  became  less  minute  and  less  meticulous,  I 
notice,  as  the  years  slipped  past,  and  after  the  advent 
of  Poppsy  and  Pee-Wee  the  entries  seem  a  bit  hur 
ried  and  often  incoherent.  But  I  have  dutifully  noted 
how  my  Dinkie  first  said  "Ah  goom"  for  "All  gone," 
just  as  I  have  fondly  remarked  his  persistent  use  of 
the  reiterative  intensive,  with  careful  citations  of  his 
"da-da"  and  his  "choo-choo  car,"  and  a  "bow-wow" 
as  applied  to  any  living  animal,  and  "wa-wa"  for 
water,  and  "me-me"  for  milk,  and  "din-din"  for  din 
ner,  and  going  "bye-bye"  for  going  to  sleep  on  his 
little  "turn-turn."  I  even  solemnly  ask,  forgetting  my 
Max  Miiller,  what  lies  at  the  root  of  this  strange 
reduplicative  process.  Then  I  come  to  where  I  have 
set  down  for  future  generations  the  momentous  fact 
that  my  Dinkie  firgt  said  "let's  playtend"  for  "let's 
pretend,"  and  spoke  of  "nasturtiums"  as  "excur 
sions,"  and  announced  that  he  could  bark  loud 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  287 

enough  to  make  Baby  Poppsy's  eyes  "bug  out" 
instead  of  "bulge  out."  And  I  come  again  to  where 
I  have  affectionately  registered  the  fact  that  my  son 
says  "set-sun"  for  "sunset"  and  speaks  of  his 
"rumpers"  instead  of  his  "rompers,"  and  coins  the 
very  appropriate  word  "downer"  to  go  with  its  sister 
word  of  "upper"  and  describes  his  Mummy  as 
"wearing  Daddy's  coffee-cup"  when  he  really  meant 
using  Daddy's  coffee-cup. 

It  all  seems  very  fond  and  foolish  now,  just  as  at 
one  time  it  all  seemed  very  big  and  wonderful.  And 
I  remember  schooling  my  Poppsy  to  say  "Daddy's  all 
sweet"  and  how  her  little  tongue,  stumbling  over  the 
sibilant,  converted  it  into  the  non-complimentary 
"Daddy's  all  feet,"  which  my  Dinky-Dunk  so  scowl- 
ingly  resented.  And  I  have  even  compiled  a  list  of 
Dinkie's  earliest  "howlers,"  from  the  time  he  was 
first  interested  in  Adam  and  Eve  and  asked  to  be 
told  about  "The  Garden  of  Sweden"  until  he  later 
explained  one  of  Poppsy's  crying-spells  by  an 
nouncing  she  had  dug  a  hole  out  by  the  corral  and 
wanted  to  bring  it  into  the  house.  I  used  to  smile  a 
bit  skeptically  over  these  tongue-twists  of  children, 
but  now  I  know  they  are  re-born  with  each  new  gen 
eration,  the  same  old  turns  of  thought  and  the  same 


288  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

old  kinks  of  utterance.  I  don't  know  why,  but  there 
is  even  a  touch  of  sadness  about  the  old  jokes  now. 
The  patina  of  time  gathers  upon  them  and  mellows 
them  and  makes  me  realize  they  belong  to  the  past — 
the  past  with  its  pain  and  its  joy,  that  can  never 
come  back  to  mortal  mothers  again. 


Monday  the  Thirtieth 

"WE  die  a  little,  when  we  go  away."  How  true  it 
is !  By  to-morrow  we  will  be  gone.  My  heart  is 
heavy  as  lead.  I  go  about,  doing  things  for  the  last 
time,  looking  at  things  for  the  last  time,  and  pretend 
ing  to  be  as  matter-of-fact  as  a  tripper  breaking 
camp.  But  there's  a  laryngitis  lump  in  my  throat 
and  there  are  times  when  I'm  glad  I'm  almost  too 
busy  to  think. 

I  was  hoping  that  the  weather  would  be  bad,  as  it 
ought  to  at  this  time  of  the  year,  so  that  I  might 
leave  my  prairie  with  some  lessened  pang  of  regret. 
But  the  last  two  days  have  been  miraculously  mild. 
A  Chinook  has  been  blowing,  the  sky  has  been  a  pal 
pitating  soft  dome  of  azure,  and  a  winey  smell  of 
spring  has  crept  over  the  earth.  .  .  .  To-night, 
knowing  it  was  the  last  night,  I  crept  out  to  say 
good-by  to  my  little  Pee-Wee  asleep  in  his  lonely 
little  bed.  It  was  a  perfect  night.  The  Lights  were 
playing  low  in  the  north,  weaving  together  in  a 
tangle  of  green  and  ruby  and  amethyst.  The  prairie 

289 


290  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

was  very  still.  The  moonlight  lay  on  everything, 
thick  and  golden  and  soft  with  mystery.  I  knelt 
beside  Pee-Wee's  grave,  not  in  bitterness,  but  bathed 
in  peace.  I  knelt  there  and  prayed. 

It  frightened  me  a  little,  when  I  looked  up,  to  see 
Peter  standing  beside  the  little  white  fence.  I 
thought,  at  first,  that  he  was  a  ghost,  he  stood  so 
still  and  he  seemed  so  tall  in  the  moonlight. 

"I'll  watch  your  boy,"  he  said  very  quietly,  "until 
you  come  back." 

He  made  me  think  of  the  Old  Priest  in  The  Sorrow 
ful  Inheritance.  He  seemed  so  calmly  benignant,  so 
dependable,  so  safe  in  his  simple  other-worldliness. 

"Oh,  Peter !"  was  all  I  could  say  as  I  moved  toward 
him  in  the  moonlight.  He  nodded,  as  much  to  him 
self  as  to  me,  as  he  took  my  hand  in  his.  I  felt  a 
great  ache,  which  was  not  really  an  ache,  and  a  new 
kind  of  longing  which  never  before,  in  all  my  life,  I 
had  nursed  or  known.  I  must  have  moved  closer  to 
Peter,  though  I  could  feel  his  hand  pull  itself  away 
from  mine.  It  made  me  feel  terribly  alone  in  the 
world. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  kiss  me  good-by?"  I  cried 
out,  with  my  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

Peter  shook  his  head  from  side  to  side,  very  slowly. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  291 

"Verboten!"  he  said  as  he  put  his  hand  over  the 
hand  which  I  had  put  on  his  shoulder. 

"But  I  may  never  come  back,  Peter !"  I  whispered, 
feeling  the  tears  go  slowly  down  my  wet  cheek. 

Peter  took  my  unsteady  fingers  and  placed  them  on 
the  white  pickets  of  the  little  rectangular  fence. 

"You'll  come  back,"  he  said  very  quietly.  And 
when  I  looked  up  he  had  turned  away. 

I  could  see  him  walking  off  in  the  yellow  moonlight 
with  his  shoulders  back  and  his  head  up.  He  walked 
slowly,  with  an  odd  wading  movement,  like  a  man 
walking  through  water.  I  was  tempted,  for  a 
moment,  to  call  after  him.  But  some  power  that  was 
not  of  me  or  any  part  of  me  prompted  me  to  silence. 
I  stood  watching  him  until  he  seemed  a  moving 
shadow  along  the  level  floor  of  the  world  flooded  with 
primrose-yellow,  until  he  became  a  shifting  stroke  of 
umber  on  a  background  of  misty  gold.  I  stood  look 
ing  after  him  as  he  passed  away,  out  of  my  sight,  and 
far,  far  off  to  the  north  a  coyote  howled  and  over 
Casa  Grande  I  could  see  a  thin  pennon  of  chimney- 
smoke  going  up  toward  Arcturus  .  .  .  Good-by, 
Peter,  and  God  bless  you  .  .  . 

Unlimited,  indeed,  is  the  power  of  Eros.  For  when 
I  went  to  slip  quietly  into  the  house,  I  found  Whinnie 


292  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

and  Struthers  seated  together  beside  the  kitchen 
range.  And  Struthers  was  reading  Tarn  O'Shanter 
aloud  to  her  laird. 

"Read  slow,  noo,  lassie,  an'  tak'  it  a'  in,"  said  the 
placidly  triumphant  voice  of  Whinstane  Sandy,  "for 
it'll  be  lang  before  ye  ken  its  like !" 


Thursday  the  Seventeenth 

THE  migration  has  been  effected  ...  I  am  alone 
in  my  room,  I  have  two  and  three-quarters  trunks 
unpacked,  and  I  feel  like  a  President's  wife  the  night 
after  Inauguration.  It  is  well  past  midnight,  but  I 
am  too  tired  and  too  unsettled  to  sleep.  Things  turn 
out  so  differently  to  what  one  expects !  And  all 
change,  to  the  home-staying  heart,  can  be  so  abys 
mally  upsetting!  .  .  . 

We  were  a  somewhat  disheveled  and  intimidated  flock 
when  we  emerged  from  our  train  and  found  Duncan 
awaiting  us  with  an  amazingly  big  touring-car  which, 
as  he  explained  with  a  short  laugh  at  my  gape  of 
wonder,  the  Barcona  Mines  would  pay  for  in  a  week. 

"It's  no  piker  you're  pulling  with  now,"  he  ex 
claimed  as  we  climbed  stiff  and  awkward  into  that 
deep-upholstered  grandeur  on  wheels.  He  said  that 
the  children  had  grown  but  would  have  to  be  togged 
out  with  some  new  duds — little  knowing  how  I  had 
stayed  up  until  long  past  midnight  mending  and 
pressing  and  doing  my  best  to  make  my  bucolic  off- 

293 


294  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

spring  presentable.  And  he  told  me  it  was  some  city 
I  had  come  to,  as  I'd  very  soon  see  for  myself.  And 
it  was  some  shack  he'd  corralled  for  his  family,  he 
added  with  a  chuckle  of  pride. 

I  tried  to  be  interested  in  the  skyscrapers  he 
showed  me  along  Eighth  Avenue,  and  the  Palliscr, 
and  the  concreted  subway,  and  the  Rockies,  in  the 
distance,  with  the  wine-glow  on  their  snow-clad  peaks. 
And  while  I  did  my  best  to  shake  off  the  Maud-Muller 
feeling  which  was  creeping  over  me,  by  studying  the 
tranquillizingly  remote  mountain-tops,  Duncan  con 
fided  to  me  that  he  had  first  said:  "Fifty  thousand 
or  bu'st !"  But  two  months  ago  he  had  amended  that 
to  "A  hundred  thousand  or  bu'st !"  and  now  he  had  his 
reasons  for  saying,  with  his  jaw  set:  "Just  a  cool 
quarter  of  a  million,  before  I  quit  this  game !" 

It  was  for  us,  I  told  myself  as  I  looked  down  at 
my  kiddies,  that  the  Dour  Man  behind  the  big 
mahogany  wheel  was  fighting.  This,  I  felt,  should 
bring  me  happiness,  and  a  new  sense  of  security. 
And  it  was  only  because  my  stomach  was  empty,  I 
tried  to  assure  myself,  that  my  poor  old  prairie 
heart  felt  that  way.  I  should  have  been  happy,  for 
I  was  going  to  a  brand-new  home — and  it  was  one  of 
those  foot-hill  late  afternoons  that  make  you  think  of 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  295 

the  same  old  razor-blade  muffled  up  in  the  same  old 
panne-velvet,  an  evening  of  softness  shot  through 
with  a  steely  sharpness.  There  was  a  Chinook  arch 
of  Irish  point-lace  still  in  the  sky,  very  much  like  the 
one  I  had  left  behind  me,  and  the  sky  itself  was  a 
canopy  of  robin-egg  blue  crepe  de  chine  hemmed  with 
salmon  pink. 

But  as  we  whirled  up  out  of  the  city  into  the  higher 
ground  of  some  boulevarded  and  terraced  residential 
district  the  evening  air  seemed  colder  and  the  solemn 
old  Rockies  toward  the  west  took  on  an  air  of  lone- 
someness.  It  made  the  thought  of  home  and  open 
fires  and  quiet  rooms  very  welcome.  The  lights  came 
out  along  the  asphalted  streets,  spangling  the  slopes 
of  that  sedate  new  suburb  with  rectangular  lines  of 
brilliants.  Duncan,  in  answer  to  the  questions  of  the 
children,  explained  that  he  was  taking  the  longer  way 
round,  so  as  to  give  us  the  best  view  of  the  house  as 
we  drove  in. 

"Here  we  are!"  he  exulted  as  we  slowed  down  and 
turned  into  a  crescent  lined  with  baby  poplar  and 
Manitoba  maple. 

I  leaned  out  and  saw  a  big  new  house  of  tapestry 
brick,  looking  oddly  palatial  on  its  imposing  slope  of 
rising  ground.  My  husband  stopped,  in  fact,  mid- 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

way  in  a  foolishly  pillared  gate  that  bisected  a  long 
array  of  cobble-stone  walls,  so  that  we  might  get  a 
look  at  the  gardens.  They  seemed  very  new  gardens, 
but  much  of  their  newness  was  lost  in  that  mercifully 
subduing  light  in  which  I  saw  trim-painted  trellises 
and  sepulchral  white  flower-urns  and  pergolas  not 
yet  softened  with  creepers.  There  was  also  a  large 
iron  fountain,  painted  white,  which  Duncan  appar 
ently  liked  very  much,  from  the  way  he  looked  at  it. 
From  two  of  the  chimneys  I  could  see  smoke  going 
up  in  the  quiet  air.  In  the  windows  I  could  see  lights, 
rose-shaded  and  warm,  and  beyond  the  shrubbery 
somewhere  back  in  the  garden  a  workman  was  driving 
nails.  His  hammer  fell  and  echoed  like  a  series  of 
rifle-shots.  From  the  garage  chimney,  too,  came 
smoke,  and  it  was  plain  from  the  sounds  that  some 
body  inside  was  busy  tuning  up  a  car-engine. 

I  sat  staring  at  the  grounds,  at  the  cobble-stone 
walls,  at  the  tapestry-brick  house  with  the  high- 
shouldered  French  cornices.  It  began  to  creep  over 
me  how  it  meant  service,  how  it  meant  protection, 
how  it  meant  guarded  lives  for  me  and  mine,  how  it 
stood  an  amazingly  complicated  piece  of  machinery 
which  took  much  thought  to  organize  and  much 
money  to  maintain.  And  the  mainspring  behind  it 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  297 

all,  I  remembered,  was  the  man  sitting  at  the  mahog 
any  wheel  so  close  to  me.  Light  and  warmth  and 
comfort  and  safety — they  were  all  to  come  from  the 
conceiting  and  the  struggling  of  my  Dour  Man, 
fighting  for  an  empty-headed  family  who  were 
scarcely  worth  it.  He  was,  after  all,  the  stoker  down 
in  the  hole,  and  without  him  everything  would  stop. 
So  when  I  saw  that  he  was  studying  my  face  with 
that  intent  sidelong  glance  of  his,  I  reached  over  and 
put  my  hand  on  his  knee,  as  I  had  done  so  often,  in 
the  old  days. 

He  looked  down,  at  that,  with  what  was  almost  an 
appearance  of  embarrassment. 

"I  want  to  play  my  part,"  I  said  with  all  the 
earnestness  of  my  earnest  old  heart,  as  he  let  in  his 
clutch  and  we  started  up  the  winding  drive. 

"It  ought  to  be  a  considerable  part,"  he  said  as 
we  drew  up  under  a  bone-white  porte-cochere  where 
a  small-bodied  Jap  stood  respectfully  impassive  and 
waiting  to  open  the  door  for  us. 

My  husband  got  down  out  of  the  car.  I  sat  won 
dering  why  I  should  feel  so  much  like  a  Lady  Jane 
Grey  approaching  the  headsman's  makura. 

"Come  on,  kids !"  Duncan  called  out  with  a  parade 
of  joviality,  like  a  cheer-leader  who  realized  that 


298  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

things  weren't  going  just  right.  For  Dinkie,  I  could 
see,  was  shrinking  back  in  the  padded  seat.  His 
underlip  was  trembling  a  trifle  as  he  sat  staring  at 
the  strange  new  house.  But  Poppsy,  true  little 
woman  that  she  was,  smiled  appreciatively  about  at 
the  material  grandeurs  which  confronted  her.  If 
she'd  had  a  tail,  I'm  sure,  she'd  have  been  wagging 
it.  And  this  so  tickled  her  dad  that  he  lifted  her  out 
of  the  car  and  carried  her  bodily  and  triumphantly 
up  the  steps. 

I  waited  for  Dinkie,  whose  eye  met  mine.  I  did  my 
best  to  show  my  teeth,  that  he  might  understand  how 
everything  was  eventually  to  be  for  the  best.  But  his 
face  was  still  clouded  as  we  climbed  the  steps  and 
passed  under  the  yoke. 

The  little  Jap,  whose  name,  I  have  since  found  out, 
is  Tokudo,  bowed  a  jack-knife  bow  and  said 
"Irashai"  as  I  passed  him.  And  "Irashai"  I  have 
also  discovered,  is  perfectly  good  Japanese  for  "Wel 
come." 

We  had  dinner  at  seven.  It  was  a  well-ordered 
meal,  but  it  went  off  rather  dismally.  I  was  de 
pressed,  for  reasons  I  couldn't  quite  fathom,  and  the 
children  were  tired,  and  Duncan,  I'm  afraid,  was  a 
bit  disappointed  in  us  all.  Tokudo  had  brought 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  299 

cocktails  for  us,  and  Duncan,  seeing  I  wasn't  drink 
ing  mine,  stowed  both  away  in  his  honorable  stom 
ach.  He  ate  heartily,  I  noticed,  and  gave  scafit 
appearance  of  a  man  pining  away  with  a  broken 
heart.  After  dinner  he  sat  back  and  bit  off  the  end 
of  a  cigar. 

"This  is  my  idea  of  living,"  he  proclaimed  as  h'e 
sent  a  blue  cloud  up  toward  the  rather  awful  dome- 
light  above  the  big  table.  "There's  stir  and  move 
ment  here,  all  day  long.  Something  more  than  sun 
sets  to  look  at !  You'll  see — something  to  fill  up  your 
day !  Why,  night  seems  to  come  before  I  even  know 
it.  And  before  I'm  out  of  bed  I'm  brooding  over 
what's  ahead  of  me  for  that  particular  date  and  day 
— Say,  that  girl  of  ours  is  falling  asleep  in  her  chair 
there !" 

So  I  escaped  and  put  the  children  to  bed.  And 
while  thus  engaged  I  discovered  that  some  of  Dun 
can's  new  friends  were  dropping  in  on  him.  I  wanted 
to  stay  up-stairs,  for  my  head  was  aching  a  lot  and 
my  heart  just  a  little,  but  Duncan  called  to  me  from 
the  bottom  of  the  stairs.  So  down  I  went,  like  a 
dutiful  wife,  to  the  room  full  of  smoke  and  talk,  where 
two  big  men  and  one  very  thin  woman  in  a  baby-bear 


300  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

motor  coat  were  drinking  Scotch  highballs  with  my 
lord  and  master.  They  were  genial  and  jolly  enough, 
but  I  couldn't  understand  their  allusions  and  I 
couldn't  see  the  points  to  their  jokes.  And  they 
seemed  to  stay  an  interminable  length  of  time.  I 
was  secretly  uncomfortable,  until  they  went,  but  I 
became  still  more  uncomfortable  after  they  had  gone. 

For  as  we  sat  there  together,  in  that  oppressive 
big  room,  I  made  rather  an  awful  discovery.  I  found 
that  my  husband  and  I  had  scarcely  anything  we 
could  talk  about  together.  So  I  sat  there,  like  an 
alligator  in  a  bayou,  wondering  why  his  rather 
flushed  face  should  be  turned  toward  me  every  now 
and  then. 

My  heart  beat  a  little  faster  as  I  saw  him  take  out 
his  watch  and  wind  it  up. 

"Let's  go  to  bed,"  he  said  as  he  pushed  it  back  in 
his  waistcoat  pocket.  My  heart  stopped  beating 
altogether,  for  a  moment  or  two.  I  felt  like  a  slave- 
girl  in  a  sheik's  tent,  like  a  desert-woman  just  sold 
into  bondage. 

It  was  the  smoky  air  and  the  highballs,  I  suppose, 
which  left  his  eyes  a  little  bloodshot  as  he  turned 
slowly  about  and  studied  my  face.  Then  he  repeated 
what  he  had  said  before, 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  301 

"7  can't!"  I  told  him,  with  a  foolish  surge  of 
terror. 

He  sat  quite  a  long  time  without  speaking.  I 
could  see  the  corners  of  the  Holbein-Astronomer 
mouth  go  down. 

"As  you  say,"  he  finally  remarked,  with  a  grim 
sort  of  quietness.  But  every  bit  of  color  had  gone 
from  his  face.  I  was  glad  when  Tokudo  came  in  to 
take  away  the  glasses. 

Duncan  stood  up,  after  the  servant  had  gone 
again,  and  bowed  to  me  very  solemnly. 

"Oyaswmi  nasi,"  he  said  with  a  stabilizing  ironic 
smile. 

"What  does  that  mean?"  I  asked,  doing  my  best  to 
smile  back  at  him. 

"That  means  'sleep  well,'  "  explained  my  husband. 
"But  Tokudo  would  probably  translate  it  into  'Con 
descend  to  enjoy  honorable  tranquillity.'  " 

Instead  of  enjoying  honorable  tranquillity,  how 
ever,  I  am  sitting  up  into  the  wee  sma'  hours  of  the 
night,  patrolling  the  gloomy  ramparts  of  my  soul's 
unrest. 


Wednesday  the  Twenty-Third 

THIS  change  to  the  city  means  a  new  life  to  my 
children.  But  I  can  also  see  it  means  new  dangers 
and  new  influences.  The  simplicity  of  ranch  life  has 
vanished.  And  Dinkie  and  Poppsy  are  already  get 
ting  acquainted  with  their  neighbors.  A  Ford  truck 
came  within  an  inch  of  running  over  Poppsy  this 
morning.  She  has  announced  a  curiosity  to  investi 
gate  ice-cream  sodas,  and  Dinkie  has  proclaimed  his 
intention  of  going  to  the  movies  Saturday  afternoon 
with  Benny  McArthur,  the  banker's  son  in  the  next 
block.  On  Monday  I'm  to  take  my  children  to 
school.  "One  of  the  finest  school-buildings  in  all  the 
West,"  Duncan  has  proudly  explained.  I  can't  help 
thinking  of  Gershom  and  his  little  cubby-hole  of  a 
wooden  building  where  he  is  even  now  so  solemnly  and 
yet  so  kind-hcartedly  teaching  the  three  R's  to  a 
gathering  of  little  prairie  outlaws. 

I  shall  have  time  on  my  hands,  I  see,  for  Hilton 
and  his  wife,  our  English  gardener-chauffeur  and  our 
portly  maid-of-all-work,  pretty  well  cover  what  the 

302 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  303 

wonderful  Tokudo  overlooks.  And  Tokudo  is  a  won 
der.  That  cat-footed  little  Jap  does  the  ordering 
and  cooking  and  serving;  he  answers  the  door  and 
the  telephone;  he  attends  to  the  rugs  and  the  hard 
wood  floors;  he  rules  over  the  butler's  pantry  and 
polishes  the  silver  and  inspects  the  linen,  and  even 
keeps  the  keys  to  Duncan's  carefully  guarded  wine- 
cellar,  which  the  mistress  of  the  house  herself  has  not 
yet  dared  to  invade. 

My  husband  seems  to  be  very  busy  with  his  coal 
mines  and  his  other  interests.  He  said  last  night  that 
his  idea  of  happiness  is  to  be  so  immersed  in  his  work 
as  to  be  unconscious  of  time  and  undisturbed  by  its 
passing.  And  he  has  been  happy,  in  that  way.  But 
Time,  that  patient  remodeler  of  all  things  mortal, 
can  still  work  while  we  sleep.  And  something  has 
been  happening,  without  Duncan  quite  knowing  it. 
He  has  changed.  He  is  older,  for  one  thing.  I  don't 
mean  that  my  husband  is  an  old  man.  But  I  can  see 
a  number  of  early-autumnal  alterations  in  him.  He's 
a  trifle  heavier  and  stiffer.  He's  lost  a  bit  of  his 
springiness.  And  he  seems  to  know  it,  in  his  secret 
heart  of  hearts,  for  he  tries  to  make  up  for  that  loss 
with  a  sort  of  coerced  blithcncss  which  doesn't  always 
carry.  He  affects  a  sort  of  creaking  jauntiness  which 


304  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

sometimes  falls  short  of  its  aim.  When  he  can't  clear 
the  hurdle,  I  notice,  he  has  the  habit  of  whipping  up 
his  tired  spirits  with  a  cocktail  or  a  highball  or  a 
silver-fizz.  But  he  is  preoccupied,  at  times.  And  at 
other  times  he  is  disturbingly  short-teinpcred.  He 
announced  this  morning,  almost  gruffly,  that  we'd 
had  about  enough  of  this  "Dinkie  and  Poppsy  busi 
ness,"  and  the  children  might  as  well  be  called  by 
their  real  names.  So  I  shall  make  another  effort  to 
get  back  to  "Elmer"  and  "Pauline  Augusta."  But 
I  feel,  in  my  bones,  that  those  pompous  appellatives 
will  not  be  always  remembered.  It  has  just  occurred 
to  me  that  my  old  habit  of  calling  my  husband 
"Dinky-Dunk"  has  slipped  away  from  me.  Endear 
ing  diminutives,  I  suppose,  are  not  elicited  by  polar 
bears. 


Thursday  the  Thirty-First 

I  DON'T  quite  know  what's  the  matter  with  me.  I'm 
like  a  cat  in  a  strange  garret.  I  don't  seem  to  be 
fitting  in.  I  sat  at  the  piano  last  night  playing 
"What's  this  dull  town  to  me,  Robin  Adair?"  And 
Duncan,  with  the  fit  and  natural  spirit  of  the  home- 
booster,  actively  resented  that  oblique  disparagement 
of  his  new  business-center.  He  believes  implicitly  in 
Calgary  and  its  future. 

As  for  myself,  I  am  rigidly  suspending  all  judg 
ments.  I'm  at  least  trying  to  play  my  part,  even 
though  my  spirit  isn't  in  it.  There  are  times  when 
I'm  tempted  to  feel  that  a  foot-hill  city  of  this  size 
is  neither  fish  nor  fowl.  It  impresses  me  as  a  fron 
tier  cow-town  grown  out  of  its  knickers  and  still  un 
gainly  in  its  first  long  trousers.  But  I  can't  help 
being  struck  by  people's  incorruptible  pride  in  their 
own  community.  It's  a  sort  of  religious  faith,  a  fixed 
belief  in  the  future,  a  stubborn  optimism  that  is 
surely  something  more  than  self-interest.  It's  the 
Dutch  courage  that  makes  deprivation  and  long  wait 
ing  endurable. 

305 


306  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

It's  the  women,  and  the  women  alone,  who  seem  left 
out  of  the  procession.  They  impress  me  as  having 
no  big  interests  of  their  own,  so  they  are  compelled 
to  playtend  with  make-believe  interests.  They  race 
like  mad  in  the  social  squirrel-cage,  or  drug  them 
selves  with  bridge  and  golf  and  the  country  club,  or 
take  to  culture  with  a  capital  C  and  read  papers 
culled  from  the  Encyclopedias;  or  spend  their  hus 
bands'  money  on  year-old  Paris  gowns  and  make  love 
to  other  women's  mates.  The  altitude,  I  imagine, 
has  quite  a  little  to  do  with  the  febrile  pace  of  things 
here.  Or  perhaps  it's  merely  because  I'm  •  an  old 
frump  from  a  back-township  ranch! 

But  I  have  no  intention  of  trying  to  keep  up  with 
them,  for  I  have  a  constitutional  liking  for  quietness 
in  my  old  age.  And  I  can't  engross  myself  in  their 
social  aspirations,  for  I've  seen  a  bit  too  much  of 
the  world  to  be  greatly  taken  with  the  internecine 
jealousies  of  a  twenty-year-old  foot-hill  town.  My 
"day"  in  this  aristocratic  section  is  Thursday,  and 
Tokudo  this  afternoon  admitted  callers  from  seven 
closed  cars,  two  landaulets,  three  Detroit  electrics 
and  one  hired  taxi.  I  know,  because  I  counted  'em. 
The  children  and  I  posed  like  a  Raeburn  group  and 
did  our  best  to  be  respectable,  for  Duncan's  sake. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  307 

But  he  seems  to  have  taken  up  with  some  queer  people 
here,  people  who  drop  in  at  any  time  of  the  evening 
and  smoke  and  drink  and  solemnly  discuss  how  a 
shandygaff  should  be  mixed  and  tell  stories  I 
wouldn't  care  to  have  the  children  hear. 

There's  one  couple  Duncan  asked  me  to  be 
especially  nice  to,  a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Murchison.  The 
latter,  I  find,  is  usually  addressed  as  "Slinkie"  by 
her  friends,  and  the  former  is  known  as  "Cattalo 
Charley"  because  he  once  formed  a  joint-stock  com 
pany  which  was  to  make  a  fortune  interbreeding  buf 
falo  and  range-cattle,  the  product  of  that  happy 
union  being  known,  I  believe,  as  "cattalo."  Duncan 
calls  him  a  "promoter,"  but  my  earlier  impression  of 
him  as  a  born  gambler  has  been  confirmed  by  the 
report  that  he's  interested  in  a  lignite  briquetting 
company,  that  he's  fathering  a  scheme,  not  only  to 
raise  stock-yard  reindeer  in  the  sub-Arctics  but  also 
to  grow  karakule  sheep  in  the  valleylands  of  the 
Coast,  that  he  once  sold  mummy  wheat  at  forty  dol 
lars  a  bushel,  and  that  in  the  old  boom  days  he  pro 
moted  no  less  than  three  oil  companies.  And  the 
time  will  come,  Duncan  avers,  when  that  man  will  be 
a  millionaire. 

As  for  "Slinkie,"  his  wife,  I  can't  be  quite  sure 


308  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

whether  I  like  her  or  not.  I  at  least  admire  her 
audacity  and  her  steel-trap  quickness  of  mind.  She 
has  a  dead  white  skin,  green  eyes,  and  most  wonderful 
hair,  hair  the  color  of  a  well-polished  copper  samovar. 
She  is  an  extremely  thin  woman  who  affects  sheathe 
skirts  and  rather  reminds  me  of  a  boa-constrictor. 
She  always  reeks  of  Apres  londre  and  uses  a  lip-stick 
as  freely  before  the  world  as  an  orchestra  conductor 
uses  a  baton  or  a  street-sweeper  a  broom.  She  is 
nervous  and  sharp-tongued  and  fearless  and  I 
thought,  at  first,  that  she  was  making  a  dead  set  at 
my  Duncan.  But  I  can  now  see  how  she  confronts 
all  men  with  that  same  dangerous  note  of  intimacy. 
Her  real  name  is  Lois.  She  talks  about  her  convent 
days  in  Belgium,  sings  risque  songs  in  very  bad 
French,  and  smokes  and  drinks  a  great  deal  more 
than  is  good  for  her.  In  Vancouver,  when  informed 
that  she  was  waiting  for  a  street-car  on  a  non-stop 
corner,  she  sat  down  between  the  tracks,  with  her 
back  to  the  approaching  car.  The  motorman,  of 
course,  had  to  come  to  a  stop — whereupon  she  arose 
with  dignity  and  stepped  aboard.  Duncan  has  told 
me  this  story  twice,  and  tends  to  consider  Lois  a 
really  wonderful  character.  I  am  a  little  afraid  of 
her.  She  asked  me  the  other  day  how  I  liked  Calgary. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  309 

I  responded,  according  to  Hoyle,  that  I  liked  the 
clear  air  and  the  clean  streets  and  the  Rockies  look 
ing  so  companionably  down  over  one's  shoulder.  Lois 
hooted  as  she  tapped  a  cigarette  end  against  her 
hennaed  thumb-nail. 

"Just  wait  until  the  sand-storms,  my  dear!"  she 
said  as  she  struck  a  match  on  her  slipper-heel. 


Saturday  the  Second 

MY  old  friend  Gershom  has  very  slyly  written  a 
rondeau  to  me.  I  have  just  found  it  enclosed  in  my 
Golden  Treasury,  which  he  handed  back  to  me  that 
last  night  at  Casa  Grande.  It's  the  first  actual 
rondeau  I  ever  had  indited  to  my  humble  self,  and 
while  I'm  a  bit  set  up  about  it,  I  can't  quite  detach 
from  Gershom's  lines  a  vaguely  obituarial  atmos 
phere  which  tends  to  depress  me. 

I  can  see  that  it  may  not  be  the  best  rondeau  in  the 
world,  but  I'm  going  to  keep  it  until  my  bones  are 
dust,  for  good  old  Gershom's  sake.  And  some  day, 
when  he  marries  the  nice  girl  he  deserves  to  marry, 
and  has  a  kiddy  or  two  of  his  own,  I'll  shame  his  gray 
hairs  by  parading  it  before  his  offspring!  I  have 
just  been  re-reading  the  lines,  in  Gershom's  copper 
plate  script.  They  are  as  follows : 

To  C.  McK. 
On  Returning  Her  Copy  of  the  Golden  Treasury 

This  golden  book,  dear  friend,  wherein  each  line 
Holds  close  a  charm  for  knowing  eyes  to  meet, 
Holds  doubly  mystical  and  doubly  sweet 

An  inner  charm  no  language  may  define: 

310 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  311 

For  o'er  each  page  a  woman's  soul  divine 

Bent  low  a  space  for  kindred  souls  to  greet, 
And  here  her  eyes  were  lit  with  gladness  fleet 

Because  of  songs  that  graced  with  rare  design 
This  book  of  thine! 

And  now  I  give  back  into  Beauty's  hand 

Her  borrowed  songs,  but  I  shall  hold  always 

Secret  and  safe  from  every  care's  demand, 
A  flame  of  light  to  fill  my  emptier  days, 

That  quieter  fellowship,  which  made  a  shrine 
This  book  of  thine !  G.  B. 


Tuesday  the  Fifth 

THE  weather  is  balmier,  and  just  a  tinge  of  green 
is  creeping  into  the  tan  of  the  foot-hill  slopes. 
Spring  is  coming  again. 

I  went  shopping  in  the  Hudson  Bay  Store  yester 
day  and  found  it  much  more  metropolitan  than  I  had 
expected.  And  I  find  I  am  three  whole  laps  behind 
in  that  steeplechase  known  as  Style.  But  I  got  a 
raft  of  things  for  Pauline  Augusta,  and  a  Boy  Scout 
outfit  for  my  laddie. 

One  of  the  few  women  I  like  in  Calgary  is  Dinkie's 
— I  mean  Elmer's — new  school-teacher.  Her  name 
is  Lossie  Brown  and  she  is  an  earnest-eyed  girl  who's 
saving  up  to  go  to  Europe  some  day  and  study  art. 
She's  a  trifle  shy,  and  unmistakably  moody,  but  her 
mind  is  as  bright  as  a  new  pin.  And  some  bright 
morning,  when  the  rose  of  womanhood  has  really 
opened,  she's  going  to  wake  up  a  howling  beauty.  I 
love  her,  too,  for  the  interest  she  has  taken  in  my  boy, 
whom  she  reports  as  getting  along  much  better  than 
she  had  expected.  So  I  have  asked  her  to  write  a 

312 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  313 

little  note  to  Gershom  Binks,  advising  him  of  his  ex- 
pupil's  advance.  For  Lossie  is  a  girl  I'd  like  Ger 
shom  to  know.  And  she  has  done  this  for  me.  I 
ask  her  over  to  the  house  as  often  as  I  can  and  yes 
terday  I  had  Dinkie  slip  a  little  platinum-banded 
fountain-pen,  with  a  card,  into  the  pocket  of  her 
rather  threadbare  ulster.  Duncan,  however,  is  not 
in  the  least  interested  in  Lossie.  He  despises  what  he 
calls  insignificant  people. 

On  my  way  home  from  shopping  I  had  Hilton  drive 
me  about  some  of  the  less-known  parts  of  the  city. 
And  I  have  been  compelled  to  recast  some  of  my 
earlier  impressions  of  Calgary.  It  is  wonderful,  in 
many  ways,  and  some  day,  I  can  see,  it  will  be  beauti 
ful,  just  as  Lossie  Brown  will  some  day  be  beautiful. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  so  happily  situated,  lying 
as  it  does  half-way  between  the  mountains  and  the 
plain.  And  the  blue  Bow  comes  dancing  so  joyously 
down  from  the  Rockies  and  the  older  city  sleeps  so 
happily  in  the  sunny  crook  of  its  valley-arm,  while 
the  newer  suburbs  seem  to  boil  up  and  run  over  the 
surrounding  hills  like  champagne  bubbling  over  the 
rim  of  a  glass.  There  are  raw  edges,  of  course,  but 
time  will  eventually  attend  to  these.  Now  and  then, 
between  the  motor-cars,  you  will  see  a  creaking  Red 


314  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

River  cart.  Next  to  an  office-building  of  gray  sand 
stone  you're  likely  to  spot  what  looks  like  a  squat 
ter's  wickyup  of  rusty  galvanized  iron.  Yesterday, 
on  our  main  street  where  the  electric-cars  were  clang 
ing  and  the  limousines  were  throwing  their  exhaust 
incense  to  the  gods  of  the  future,  I  caught  sight  of  a 
lonely  and  motionless  figure,  isolated  in  the  midst  of 
a  newer  world.  It  was  the  figure  of  a  Cree  squaw, 
blanketed  and  many-wrinkled  and  unmistakably 
dirty,  blinking  at  the  devil-wagons  and  the  ceaseless 
hurry  of  the  white  man.  And  being  somewhat  Indian- 
ized,  as  my  husband  once  assured  me  I  was,  I  could 
sympathize  with  that  stolid  old  lady  in  the  blanket. 
I'm  even  beginning  to  find  that  one  can  get  tired  of 
optimism,  especially  when  it  is  being  so  plainly  con 
verted  from  a  psychic  abstraction  into  a  municipal 
asset.  There's  a  sort  of  communal  Christian  Science 
in  this  place  which  ordains  that  thought  shall  not 
dwell  on  such  transient  evils  as  drought  or  black  rust 
or  early  frost  or  hail-storms  or  money  stringencies. 
And  there's  a  sort  of  youthful  greediness  in  people's 
longing  to  live  all  there  is  of  life  to  live  and  to  know 
all  there  is  of  life  to  know.  For  there  is  a  limit  to 
the  sensations  we  can  digest,  just  as  there  is  a  limit 
to  the  meat  we  can  digest.  And  out  here  we  have  a 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  315 

tendency  to  bolt  more  than  is  good  for  us,  to  bolt  it 
without  pausing  to  get  the  true  taste  of  it.  The 
women  of  this  town  remind  me  more  and  more  of  mice 
in  an  oxygen  bell ;  they  race  round  and  round,  drunk 
with  an  excitement  they  can't  quite  understand,  until 
they  burn  up  their  little  lives  the  same  as  the  mice 
burn  up  their  little  lungs. 

.  .  .  I've  had  a  letter  from  Whinstane  Sandy  to 
day,  writing  about  seed-wheat  and  the  repairs  for 
the  tractor.  It  seems  like  a  message  from  another 
world.  He  reports  that  poor  old  Scotty  is  eating 
again  and  no  longer  mourns  day  in  and  day  out  for 
his  lost  master.  And  Mr.  Ketley  has  very  kindly 
brought  over  the  liniment  for  Mudski's  shoulder. 
.  .  .  Whatever  I  may  be,  or  whatever  I  may  have 
done,  I  feel  that  I  can  still  cleanse  my  heart  by  sacri 
fice. 


Friday  the  Ninth 

O»E  can  get  out  of  the  habit,  apparently,  of  hav 
ing  children  about.  My  kiddies,  I  begin  to  see, 
occasionally  grate  on  Duncan.  He  brought  tears  to 
the  eyes  of  Pauline  Augusta  yesterday  by  the  way  he 
scolded  her  for  using  a  lead-pencil  on  the  living-room 
woodwork.  And  the  night  before  he  shouted  much 
strong  language  at  Elmer  for  breaking  a  window- 
pane  in  the  garage  with  Benny  McArthur's  new  air- 
gun. 

Elmer  and  his  father,  I'm  afraid,  have  rather 
grown  away  from  each  other.  More  than  once  I've 
caught  Duncan  staring  at  his  son  and  heir  in  a 
puzzled  and  a  slightly  frustrated  sort  of  way.  And 
Elmer's  soul  promptly  becomes  incommunicado  when 
his  iron-browed  pater  is  in  the  neighborhood. 

Duncan  is  very  proud  of  his  grand  new  house.  He 
is  anxious  to  build  a  conservatory  out  along  the 
southwest  wing.  But  he  has  asked  how  long  a  con 
servatory  would  last  with  two  young  mountain-goats 
gamboling  along  its  leads.  .  .  .  Lossie,  little  sus- 

816 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  317 

pecting  the  pang  she  was  giving  me,  laughingly 
showed  me  a  manuscript  which  she  found  by  accident 
in  my  Dinkie's  reader.  It  was  a  poem,  dedicated  to 
"D.  O'L."  And  written  in  a  stiff  little  hand  I  read: 

"Your  lips  are  lined  with  roses, 

Your  eyes  they  shinne  like  gold 
If  you  call  me  from  the  sunlight, 

I'll  answer  from  the  cold. 
But  I  wonder  why,  Oh,  why, 

You  stay  so  far  from  me? 
If  you  whisper  from  the  prarrie, 

I'll  call  from  Calgary." 

"Won't  it  be  wonderful,"  said  Lossie  as  I  sat  pon 
dering  over  those  foolish  little  lines,  "won't  it  be  won 
derful,  if  Dinkie  grows  up  to  be  a  great  poet?" 


Monday  the  Eleventh 

ELMER,  alias  Dinkie,  after  many  days'  mourning 
for  his  lost  Scotty,  is  consoling  himself,  as  other  men 
do,  with  a  substitute.  Last  Friday  he  brought  home 
a  flop-eared  pup  with  a  drooping  tail  and  an  indef 
inite  ancestry,  explaining  that  he  had  come  into  pos 
session  of  the  aforementioned  animal  by  the  duly 
delivered  purchase-price  of  thirty-seven  cents. 

Remembering  Minty  and  certain  matters  of  the 
past,  I  was  troubled  in  spirit.  But  I  couldn't  see 
why  my  son  shouldn't  have  an  animal  to  love.  And  I 
have  had  Hilton  fix  a  little  box  in  one  corner  of  the 
garage  for  Dinkie's  new  pet,  which  he  has  christened 
Rowdy. 

Rowdy,  I  now  see,  is  a  canine  of  limited  spirit  and 
is  not  likely  to  repeat  the  offenses  of  Minty.  But 
Dinkie  really  loves  his  new  pup,  despite  the  latter's 
indubitably  democratic  ancestry.  And  I  begin  to 
suspect  that  my  laddie's  weakness  for  mongrels  may 
arise  from  his  earlier  experience  with  Duncan's 
blooded  bull-dog,  which  he  struggled  with  for  three 

318 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  319 

whole  days,  fondly  and  foolishly  trying  to  teach  that 
stolid  animal  the  art  of  "pointing." 

On  Saturday  Dinkie  smuggled  the  verminous 
Rowdy  to  the  upper  bathroom  and  gave  him  a  thor 
ough  but  quite  unrelished  soaping  .  .  .  Dinkie,  by 
the  way,  is  now  a  "cub"  in  the  Boy  Scouts  and 
after  adorning  himself  in  khaki  goes  off  on  hikes  and 
takes  lessons  in  woodcraft.  Saturday  the  Scouts  of 
his  school  marched  behind  a  real  band  and  Lossie 
and  I  sat  in  the  car  waiting  for  my  laddie  to  appear. 
He  wiggled  one  hand,  and  smiled  sheepishly,  as  he 
caught  sight  of  us.  But  he  kept  "eyes  front"  and 
refused  to  give  any  further  sign  as  he  marched 
bravely  on  behind  that  brave  music.  He  is  learning 
the  law  of  the  pack.  For  some  first  frail  ideas  of 
service  are  beginning  to  incubate  in  that  egoistic 
little  bean  of  his.  And  he's  suffering,  I  suppose,  the 
old  contest  between  the  ancestral  lust  to  kill  and  the 
new-born  inclination  to»succor  and  preserve.  That 
means  he  may  some  day  be  "a  gentleman."  And  I've 
a  weakness  for  that  old  Newman  definition  of  a  gen 
tleman  as  one  who  never  inflicts  pain — "tender 
towards  the  bashful,  gentle  towards  the  distant,  and 
merciful  towards  the  absurd" — conducting  himself 
toward  his  enemy  as  if  he  were  some  day  to  be  his 


320  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

friend.  And  I  also  wish  there  were  a  few  more  of 
them  in  this  hard  old  world  of  ours ! 

Speaking  of  gentlemen,  there's  a  Captain  Goodhue 
here  whom  I  rather  like.  Lois  Murchison  brought  us 
together  in  the  tea-room  of  the  Palliser.  In  more 
ways  than  one  he  reminds  me  of  Peter.  But  Captain 
Goodhue  is  a  much  older  man,  and  is  English,  coming 
from  a  very  excellent  family  in  Sussex.  He's  one  of 
those  iron-gray  ex- Army  men  who  still  believe  in  a 
monocle  and  can  be  loyal  to  a  queen  even  though  she 
wears  a  basque  with  darts  in  it.  And  he  doesn't  talk 
to  a  woman  with  that  ragging  air  of  condescension 
which  seems  to  be  peculiar  to  western  American  civi 
lization.  He  is  courteous  and  thoughtful  and  sincere, 
though  I  noticed  that  he  winced  a  trifle  when  I  sud 
denly  remembered,  as  he  was  taking  his  departure, 
that  the  McKails  were  living  in  what  must  have  once 
been  his  house.  He  blinked,  like  a  well-groomed  old 
eagle,  when  I  reminded  him  of  this.  I  never  dreamed, 
of  course,  that  the  subject  would  be  painful  to  him. 
But  it  was  an  honor,  he  acknowledged  with  a  bow,  to 
pass  his  household  gods  on  to  a  lady  to  whom  so 
much  had  already  been  given. 

When  I  asked  Lois  about  it,  later  on,  she  rather 
indifferently  acknowledged  that  the  old  gentleman 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  321 

had  been  making  a  mess  of  his  different  business  ven 
tures.  He  was  much  better  at  golf  than  getting 
in  on  the  ground-floor  of  a  land  deal.  He  was  too 
old  fogy,  said  Slinkie,  to  make  good  in  the  West. 
He  still  kept  his  head  up,  but  they'd  pretty  well 
picked  him  to  the  bones. .  .  .  Lois,  by  the  way, 
describes  me  as  something  new  in  her  menagerie  and 
drops  in  to  see  me  at  the  most  unexpected  moments. 
Then  her  tongue  goes  like  a  mower-knife.  She  is 
persuaded  that  I  should  permanent-wave  my  hair, 
lower  my  waist-line,  and  go  in  for  amethysts.  "And 
interest  yourself,  my  dear,  in  an  outside  man  or 
two,"  she  has  sagely  advised  me.  "For  husbands,  you'll 
find,  always  accept  you  at  the  other  mutt's  valua 
tion  !" 

I  was  tempted  to  make  her  open  her  jade-green 
eyes,  for  a  moment,  by  telling  her  I  was  already 
interested  in  an  outside  man  or  two  and  that  my  lord 
and  master  hadn't  been  much  influenced  by  the  ex 
traneous  appreciations.  But  I'm  a  little  afraid  of 
Slinkie  and  her  serpent's  tongue.  And  I'm  a  little 
afraid  of  this  new  circle  into  which  my  Duncan  has 
so  laboriously  engineered  himself.  They  more  and 
more  impress  on  my  simple  old  prairie  soul  that  the 
single-track  woman  is  the  woman  who  gets  most  out 


322  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

of  life,  that  there's  nothing  really  great  and  nothing 
really  enduring  that  is  not  built  on  loyalty  and  truth. 
Character  is  Fate,  as  I  once  before  inscribed  in  this 
book  of  my  life.  And  I've  been  sitting  up  to-night, 
while  the  eternal  bridge  game  is  going  on  below,  ask 
ing  myself  if  all  is  well  with  Chaddie  McKail.  Have 
I,  or  have  I  not,  conceded  too  much?  Am  I  turning 
into  nothing  more  than  a  mush  of  concession? 
Haven't  I  been  bribed  by  comfort,  and  blinded  to  a 
situation  which  I  am  now  almost  afraid  to  face? 
Haven't  I  been  selfishly  scheming  for  the  welfare  of 
my  children  and  endangering  all  their  future  and  my 
own  by  the  price  I  am  paying?  Haven't  I  been 
crazily  manning  a  rickety  old  pump,  trying  to  keep 
afloat  a  family  hulk  whose  seams  are  wide  open  and 
whose  timbers  are  water-logged?  And  how  long  can 
this  sort  of  thing  go  on?  And  what  will  be  the  end 
of  it? 

I  try  to  warn  myself  not  to  smash  my  goods  to  kill 
a  rat,  as  the  Chinese  say.  I  try  to  flatter  myself  that 
I  am  not  letting  circumstances  stampede  me  into  any 
hasty  decision.  There's  many  a  woman,  I  suppose; 
with  a  husband  whose  legal  promise  has  outlived  his 
loyalty.  But  all  is  not  well  here  about  my  heart.  I 
know  that,  by  the  way  it  keeps  sending  up  little  trial- 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  323 

balloons,  to  see  which  way  the  wind  is  really  blowing. 
.  .  .  And  Sunday  night  Cattalo  Charlie  went  home 
quite  drunk.  And  our  local  member,  emboldened  by 
his  seventh  highball,  offhandedly  invited  me  to  accom 
pany  him  on  a  little  run  up  to  Banff,  stabbing  me 
with  a  hurt  look  when  I  told  him  I'd  see  when  Duncan 
could  get  away  from  his  work. .  .  . 

I  wonder  if  spring  is  coming  to  Casa  Grande? 
And  at  Alabama  Ranch?  And  are  the  pussy-willows 
showing  in  the  slough-ends?  And  why  doesn't  Peter 
Ketley  ever  write  to  me? 


Saturday  the  Sixteenth 

LOSSIE  and  Gershom,  I  find,  have  drifted  into  the 
habit  of  writing  to  each  other.  It  is,  of  course,  all 
purely  platonic  and  pedagogic,  arising  out  of  a  com 
mon  interest  in  my  Dinkie's  academic  advancement. 
But  Lossie  borrowed  Dinkie  this  morning  to  have  a 
photograph  taken  with  him,  one  copy  of  which  she 
has  very  generously  promised  to  send  on  to  Gershom. 
.  .  .  Struthers  has  sent  me  a  very  satisfactory 
report  from  Casa  Grande,  which  I  dreamed  last  night 
had  burned  to  the  ground,  compelling  me  and  my  kid 
dies  to  live  in  the  old  prairie-schooner,  laboriously 
pulled  about  the  prairie  by  Tithonus  and  Calamity 
Kate.  And  when  I  applied  at  Peter's  door  for  a 
handful  of  meal  for  my  starving  children,  he  called 
me  worse  than  a  fallen  woman  and  drove  me  off  into 
the  wilderness. 

Duncan  asked  me  to-day  if  I'd  motor  up  to  the 
mines  with  him  for  the  week-end.,  I  had  to  tell  him 
that  I'd  promised  to  take  Elmer  and  Pauline 
Augusta  to  hear  Kathleen  Parlow  and  that  it 

324 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  325 

wouldn't  seem  quite  fair  to  break  my  word.  Duncan 
said  that  I  was  the  best  judge  of  that.  Then  he 
slammed  a  drawer  shut  and  asked  me,  in  his  newer 
manner,  how  long  I  intended  to  pull  this  iceberg 
stuff.  "For  I  can't  see,"  he  concluded  after  calling 
out  for  Tokudo  to  bring  his  hat  and  coat,  "that  I'm 
getting  such  a  hell  of  a  lot  out  of  this  arrangement !" 
I  asked  him,  as  quietly  as  I  could,  what  he  expected 
of  me.  But  I  could  feel  my  heart  pounding  quick 
against  my  ribs.  I  am  not,  and  never  pretended  to 
be,  any  stained-glass  saint.  And  there  were  a  few 
things  I  felt  it  was  about  time  to  unload.  But 
Tokudo  cat-footed  back  with  the  coat,  and  I  could 
hear  Lossie's  clear  laugh  as  she  came  in  through  the 
front  door  with  the  returning  Dinkie,  and  some  inner 
voice  warned  me  to  hold  my  peace.  So  Duncan  and 
I  merely  stood  there  staring  at  each  other,  for  a 
moment  or  two,  across  an  abysmal  and  unbridgeable 
gulf  of  silence.  Then  he  strode  out  to  his  car  without 
as  much  as  a  howdy-do  to  the  startled  and  slightly 
mystified  Lossie. 


Monday  the  Eighteenth 

I  HAVE  just  learned  that  we  were  blackballed  from 
the  Country  Club.  My  husband,  at  least,  has  met 
with  that  experience. 

It  was  Lois  who  let  the  cat  out  of  the  bag.  She 
wasn't  clear  on  all  the  details,  but  it  was  that  old  has- 
been  of  a  Goodhue  who  was  at  the  bottom  of  it  all, 
according  to  the  lady  known  as  Slinkie.  Duncan 
and  he  had  clashed,  from  the  first.  Then  Duncan  had 
bought  up  his  paper,  and  compelled  him  to  mortgage 
his  home.  It  was  because  of  something  to  do  with  the 
Barcona  Mines  directorate,  Lois  thought,  that  Cap 
tain  Goodhue  had  had  Duncan  blackballed  when  he 
applied  for  membership  in  the  Country  Club,  the 
Captain  being  vice-president  of  the  original  holding 
company.  Lois  laughed  none  too  pleasantly  when  she 
added  that  her  Charley  and  my  Duncan  had  joined 
hands  to  go  after  the  old  man's  scalp.  And  they  had 
got  it.  They  turned  him  inside  out,  before  they  got 
through  with  him.  They  took  his  fore-lock  and  his 
teepee  and  his  last  string  of  wampum.  And  the  old 
snob,  of  course,  would  never  forgive  them. 

.  .  .  They  took  his  fore-lock,  and  his  teepee  .  .  . 
326 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  327 

And  it  was  Chaddie  McKail  and  her  bairns  who  were 
now  housing  warm  in  that  captured  teepee !  And  all 
this  toiling  and  moiling,  on  the  part  of  my  husband, 
all  this  scheming  and  intriguing  and  juggling  with 
figures,  had  been  a  campaign  for  power,  a  plotting 
and  working  to  get  even  with  this  haughty  old  enemy 
who  could  carry  his  defeat  so  lightly!  To  be  black 
balled  like  that,  I  remembered,  was  to  be  proclaimed 
not  a  gentleman.  And  it  must  have  cut  deep.  At  one 
time,  I  suppose,  Duncan  would  have  called  his  mon- 
ocled  captain  out.  But  men  seem  to  fight  differently 
nowadays.  They  fight  differently,  but  no  less  grimly. 
And  Duncan,  whether  it  is  a  virtue  or  a  vice  in  his 
make-up,  would  always  be  a  fighter. .  .  .  Yet  I  have 
no  sense  of  gratitude  to  Lois  Murchison  for  deposit 
ing  her  painful  truths  in  my  lap.  She  warned  me,  in 
her  artless  soprano,  that  there  wasn't  much  good  in 
sentimentalizing  the  situation.  But  she  has  thrown 
a  shadow  across  the  house  which  I  was  trying  to  make 
into  a  home.  Without  quite  knowing  it,  she  has 
cheapened  her  life-mate  in  my  eyes.  Without  quite 
intending  it,  she  has  left  my  own  husband  more  igno 
minious  than  he  once  stood.  I  was  trying  hard  to 
school  myself  into  a  respect  for  his  material  suc 
cesses.  I  was  struggling  to  excuse  a  great  many 
things  by  the  engrossing  nature  of  his  work.  But  the 


328  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

motive  behind  all  his  efforts  seemed  suddenly  a  sordid 
one,  in  many  ways  a  mean  one. 

I  keep  remembering  what  Lois  said  about  not  senti 
mentalizing  a  situation.  But  I'm  not  yet  such  a  mush 
of  concession  that  I  can't  tell  black  from  white.  And 
there's  some  part  of  us,  some  vague  but  unescapable 
part  of  us,  which  we  must  respect,  otherwise  we  have 
no  right  to  walk  God's  good  earth.  .  .  . 

I  want  to  get  away,  for  a  day  or  two,  to  think 
things  out.  I  think,  before  Duncan  gets  back  to 
morrow,  I  shall  take  Poppsy  and  run  up  to  Banff. 
I  may  get  my  view-point  back.  And  the  mountain 
quietness  may  do  me  good.  .  .  . 

I  keep  having  that  same  dull  ache  of  disappoint 
ment  which  came  to  me  as  a  girl,  after  I'd  idolized  a 
great  man  called  Meredith  and  after  I'd  almost 
prayed  to  a  great  poet  called  Browning,  on  finding 
that  one  was  so  imperfectly  monogamous  and  that 
the  other  philandered  and  talked  foolishly  to  women. 
I  had  thrust  my  girlish  faith  in  their  hands,  as  so 
often  befalls  with  the  young,  and  they  had  betrayed 
it.  ...  But  for  the  second  time  since  I  married,  I 
have  been  reading  Modern  Love.  And  I  can  almost 
forgive  the  Apollo  of  Box  Hill  for  that  betrayal 
which  he  knew  nothing  about. 


Thursday  the  Twenty-Eighth 

THIS  is  Thursday  the  twenty-eighth  of  April.  I 
want  to  be  sure  of  that.  For  there  are  very  few 
things  I  can  be  sure  of  now. 

The  bottom  has  fallen  out  of  my  world.  I  sit  here, 
telling  myself  to  be  calm.  But  it's  not  easy  to  sit 
quiet  when  you  face  the  very  worst  that  all  life  could 
confront  you  with.  My  Dinkie  has  run  away. 

My  boy  has  left  me,  has  left  his  home,  has  vanished 
like  smoke  into  the  Unknown.  He  is  gone  and  I  have 
no  trace  of  him. 

I  find  it  hard  to  write.  Yet  I  must  write,  for  the 
mere  expression  of  what  I  feel  tends  to  ease  the  ache. 
It  helps  to  keep  me  sane.  And  already  I  realize  I 
was  wrong  when  I  wrote  "the  very  worst  that  all  life 
could  confront  you  with."  For  my  laddie,  after  all, 
is  not  dead.  He  must  still  be  alive.  And  while  there's 
life,  there's  hope. 

I  got  back  from  Banff  yesterday  morning  about 
nine,  and  Hilton  was  there  with  the  car  to  meet  me, 
as  I  had  told  him  to  be.  I  was  anxious  to  know  at 
once  if  everything  was  all  right,  but  I  found  it  hard 

329 


330 

to  put  a  question  so  personal  before  that  impersonal- 
eyed  Englishman.  So  I  strove  to  give  my  interroga 
tion  an  air  of  the  casual  by  offhandedly  inquiring: 
"How's  Rowdy,  Hilton?" 

"Dead,  ma'am,"  was  his  prompt  reply. 

This  rather  took  my  breath  away. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  Rowdy  is  dead?"  I 
insisted,  noticing  Poppsy's  color  change  as  she  lis 
tened. 

"Killed,  ma'am,"  said  the  laconic  Hilton. 

"By  whom?"  I  demanded. 

"Mr.  Murchison,  ma'am,"  was  the  answer. 

"How?"  I  asked,  feeling  my  vague  dislike  for  that 
particular  name  sharpen  up  to  something  danger 
ously  like  hatred. 

"He  always  comes  up  the  drive  a  bit  fast-like, 
ma'am.  He  hit  the  pup,  and  that  was  the  end  of 
him !" 

"Does  Dinkie  know?"  was  my  first  question,  after 
that. 

"He  saw  it,  ma'am,"  admitted  my  car-driver. 

"Saw  what?" 

"Saw  Mr.  Murchison  throw  the  dog  over  the  wall 
into  the  brush !" 

"What  did  he  say?" 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  331 

"He  swore  a  bit,  ma'am,  and  then  laughed,"  ad 
mitted  Hilton,  after  a  pause. 

"Dinkie  laughed?"  I  cried,  incredulous. 

"No ;  Mr.  Murchison,  ma'am,"  explained  Hilton. 

"What  did  Dinkie  say?"  I  insisted.  And  again  the 
man  on  the  driving-seat  remained  silent  a  moment  or 
two. 

"It  was  what  he  did,  ma'am,"  he  finally  remarked. 

"What  did  he  do?"  I  demanded. 

"Ran  into  the  house,  ma'am,  and  snatched  the  ice 
pick  off  the  kitchen  table.  Then  he  went  to  the  big 
car  like  a  mad  'un,  he  did.  Pounded  holes  in  every 
blessed  tire  with  his  pick !" 

"And  then  what?"  I  asked,  with  my  heart  up  in 
my  throat. 

Hilton  waited  until  he  had  taken  a  crowded  corner 
before  answering. 

"Then  he  found  the  dead  dog,  ma'am,  and  bathed 
it,  and  borrowed  the  garden  spade  from  me.  Then 
he  took  it  somewheres  back  in  the  ravine  and  buried 
it.  I  gave  him  the  tool-box  off  the  old  roadster,  to 
put  what  was  left  of  the  pup  in." 

"And  then?"  I  prompted,  with  a  quaver  in  my 
voice  I  couldn't  control. 

"He  met  Mr.  Murchison  coming  out  and  he  called 


332  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

him  w'at  I'd  not  like  to  repeat,  ma'am,  until  Mr. 
McKail  stepped  out  to  see  what  was  wrong,  and 
interfered." 

"How  did  he  interfere?"  was  my  next  question. 

"By  taking  the  lad  into  the  house,  ma'am,"  was  m^ 
witness's  retarded  reply. 

"Then  what  happened?"  I  exacted. 

I  waited,  knowing  what  was  coming,  but  I  dreaded 
to  hear  it. 

"He  gave  him  a  threshing,  ma'am,"  I  heard  HiL 
ton's  voice  saying,  far  away,  as  though  it  came  to  me 
over  a  long-distance  telephone  on  a  wet  night. 

I  sat  rigid  as  we  mounted  American  Hill.  I  sat 
rigid  as  we  swerved  in  through  the  ridiculous  manor- 
like  gate  and  up  the  winding  drive  and  in  under  the 
ugly  new  porte-cochere.  I  didn't  even  wait  for 
Poppsy  as  I  got  out  of  the  car.  I  didn't  even  speak 
to  Tokudo  as  he  ran  mincingly  to  take  my  things.  I 
walked  straight  to  the  breakfast-room  where  I  saw 
my  husband  sitting  at  the  end  of  the  oblong  white 
table,  stirring  a  cup  of  coffee  with  a  spoon. 

"Where's  Dinkie?"  I  asked,  trying  to  keep  my 
voice  low  but  not  quite  succeeding. 

Duncan  looked  up  at  me  with  a  coldly  meditative 
eye. 


833 

"Where  he  usually  is  at  this  time  of  day,"  he 
finally  answered. 

"Where?"  I  repeated. 

"At  school,  of  course,"  admitted  my  husband  as  he 
reached  out  for  a  piece  of  buttered  toast.  He  was 
making  a  pretense  at  being  very  tranquil-minded. 
But  his  hand,  I  noticed,  wasn't  so  steady  as  it  might 
have  been. 

"Is  he  all  right?"  I  demanded,  with  my  voice  rising 
in  spite  of  myself. 

"Considerably  better,  I  imagine,  than  he  has  been 
for  some  time,"  was  the  deliberate  answer  from  the 
man  with  the  blood-shot  eyes  at  the  end  of  the  table. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that?"  I  asked.  And  any 
one  of  intelligence,  I  suppose,  could  see  I  was  making 
that  question  a  challenge. 

"I  mean  that  since  you  saw  him  last  he's  had  a 
damned  good  whaling,"  said  Duncan,  with  his  jaw 
squared,  so  that  he  reminded  me  of  a  King-Lud  bull 
dog. 

I  paid  no  attention  to  Tokudo,  who  came  into  the 
room  to  repeat  that  his  master  was  wanted  at  the 
telephone. 

"Do  you  mean  you  struck  that  child?"  I  de 
manded,  leaning  on  the  table  and  looking  straight 


334  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

into  his  eyes,  which  met  mine  quite  unabashed,  and 
with  an  air  of  mockery  about  them. 

My  husband  nodded  as  he  pushed  back  his  chair. 

"He  got  a  good  one,"  he  asserted  as  he  rose  to  his 
feet  and  rather  leisurely  brushed  a  crumb  or  two 
from  his  vest-front.  He  could  even  afford  to  smile 
as  he  said  it.  My  expression,  I  suppose,,  would  have 
made  any  man  smile.  But  there  was  something  mad 
dening  in  his  mockery,  at  such  a  moment.  There  was 
something  gratuitously  cruel  in  his  parade  of  uncon 
cern.  Yet,  oddly  enough,  as  I  looked  at  his  slightly 
blotched  face  I  couldn't  help  remembering  that  that 
was  the  face  I  had  once  kissed  and  held  close  against 
my  cheek,  had  wanted  to  hold  against  my  cheek.  And 
now  I  hated  it. 

I  had  to  wait  and  cast  about  for  words  of  hatred 
strong  enough  to  carry  the  arrows  of  enmity  which 
nothing  could  stop  me  from  delivering.  But  while  I 
waited  Tokudo  announced  for  the  third  time  that  my 
husband  was  wanted  at  the  telephone.  And  a  very 
simple  thing  happened.  My  husband  answered  his 
call. 

I  saw  Duncan  turn  and  walk  out  of  the  room.  I 
could  hear  his  steps  in  the  hallway,  loud  on  the  waxed 
hardwood  and  low  on  the  rugs.  I  could  hear  his  de- 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  335 

liberated  chest-tones  as  he  talked  over  the  wire,  talked 
quietly  and  earnestly,  talked  me  and  my  hatred  out 
of  his  head  and  out  of  his  world.  And  I  realized,  as  I 
sat  there  at  the  table-end  with  my  gloves  twisted  up 
under  my  hands  and  my  heart  even  more  twisted  up 
under  my  ribs,  that  it  was  all  useless,  that  it  was  all 
futile.  He  was  beyond  the  reach  of  my  resentment. 
We  were  in  different  worlds,  forevermore. 

I  was  still  sitting  there  when  he  looked  in  at  the 
door,  with  his  hat  and  coat  on,  on  his  way  out.  I 
could  feel  him  there,  without  directly  seeing  him. 
And  I  could  feel,  too,  that  he  wanted  to  say  some 
thing.  But  I  declined  to  lift  my  head,  and  1  could 
hear  the  door  close  as  he  went  out  to  the  waiting  car. 

I  sat  there  for  a  long  time,  thinking  about  my 
Dinkie.  Twice  I  almost  surrendered  to  the  impulse 
to  telephone  to  Lossie  Brown.  But  I  knew  it  would 
be  no  easy  matter  to  get  in  touch  with  her.  And  in 
two  hours  it  would  be  twelve,  and  any  minute  after 
that  my  boy  would  be  home  again.  I  tried  to  cross- 
examine  Tokudo,  but  I  could  get  nothing  out  of  that 
tight-lipped  Jap.  I  watched  the  clock.  I  noticed 
Hilton,  when  he  got  back,  raking  blood-stains  off  the 
gravel  of  the  driveway.  I  wandered  about,  like  a  lost 
turkey-hen,  trying  to  dramatize  my  meeting  with 


336  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

Dinkie,  doing  my  best  to  cooper  together  some  inci 
dent  which  might  keep  our  first  minute  or  two 
together  from  being  too  hard  on  my  poor  kiddie.  I 
heard  the  twelve  o'clock  whistles,  at  last,  and  then 
the  Westminster-chimes  of  the  over-ornate  clock  in 
the  library  announce  that  noon  had  come.  And  still 
the  minutes  dragged  on. 

And  when  the  tension  was  becoming  almost  unbear 
able  I  heard  a  step  on  the  gravel  and  my  heart 
started  to  pound. 

But  instead  of  Dinkie,  it  was  Lossie,  Lossie  with 
smiling  lips  and  inquiring  brown  eyes  and  splashes  of 
rose  in  her  cheeks  from  rapid  walking. 

"Where's  Dinkie?"  I  asked. 

She  stopped  short,  still  smiling. 

"That's  exactly  what  I  was  going  to  ask?"  I  heard 
her  saying.  Then  her  smile  faded  as  she  searched  my 
face.  "There's — there's  nothing  happened,  has 
there?" 

I  groped  my  way  to  a  pillar  of  the  porte-cochere 
and  leaned  against  it. 

"Didn't  Dinkie  come  to  school  this  morning?"  I 
asked  as  the  earth  wavered  under  my  feet. 

"No,"  acknowledged  Lossie,  still  searching  my 
face.  And  a  frown  of  perplexity  came  into  her  own. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  337 

I  knew  then  what  had  happened.  I  knew  it  even 
before  I  went  up  to  Dinkie's  room  and  started  my 
frantic  search  through  his  things.  I  could  see  that 
a  number  of  his  more  treasured  small  possessions 
were  gone.  I  delved  forlornly  about,  hoping  that  he 
might  have  left  some  hidden  message  for  me.  But  I 
could  find  nothing.  I  sat  looking  at  his  books  and 
broken  toys,  at  the  still  open  copy  of  The  Count  of 
Monte  Crist o  which  he  must  have  been  poring  over 
only  the  night  before,  at  his  neatly  folded  under 
clothes  and  the  little  row  of  gravel-worn  shoes.  They 
took  on  an  air  of  pathos,  an  atmosphere  of  the 
memorial.  Yet,  oddly  enough,  it  was  Lossie,  and 
Lossie  alone,  who  broke  into  tears.  The  more  she 
cried,  in  fact,  the  calmer  I  found  myself  becoming, 
though  all  the  while  that  dead  weight  of  misery  was 
hanging  like  lead  from  my  heart. 

I  went  at  once  to  the  telephone  and  called  up 
Duncan's  office.  He  was  still  there,  though  I  had  to 
wait  several  minutes  before  I  could  get  in  touch  with 
him. 

I  had  thought,  at  first,  that  he  would  be  off 
handedly  skeptical  at  the  message  which  I  was  send 
ing  him  over  the  wire,  the  message  that  my  boy  had 
run  away.  He  might  even  be  flippantly  indifferent, 


338  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

and  remind  me  that  much  worse  things  could  have 
happened. 

But  I  knew  at  once  that  he  was  genuinely  alarmed 
at  the  news  which  I'd  given  him.  It  apparently 
staggered  him  for  a  moment.  Then  he  said  in  his 
curt  telephonic  chest-tones,  "I'll  be  up  at  the  house, 
at  once." 

He  came,  before  I'd  even  completed  a  second  and 
more  careful  search.  His  face  was  cold  and  non-com 
mittal  enough,  but  his  color  was  gone  and  there  was 
a  look  that  was  almost  one  of  contrition  in  his 
troubled  eyes,  which  seemed  unwilling  to  meet  mine. 
He  questioned  Lossie  and  cross-examined  Hilton  and 
Tokudo,  and  then  called  up  the  Chief  of  Police.  Then 
he  telephoned  to  the  different  railway  stations,  and 
carried  Lossie  off  in  the  car  to  the  McArthurs',  to 
interview  Benny,  and  came  back  an  hour  later  with 
that  vague  look  of  frustration  still  on  his  face. 

He  sat  down  to  luncheon,  but  he  ate  very  little. 
He  was  silent  for  quite  a  long  time. 

"Your  boy's  all  right,"  he  said  in  a  much  softer 
voice  than  I  had  expected  from  him.  "He's  big 
enough  to  look  after  himself.  And  we'll  be  on  his 
trail  before  nightfall.  He  can't  go  far." 

"No ;  he  can't  go  far,"  I  echoed,  trying  to  fortify 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  339 

myself  with  the  knowledge  that  he  must  have  taken 
little  more  than  a  dollar  from  the  gilded  cast-iron 
elephant  which  he  used  as  a  bank. 

"I  don't  want  this  to  get  in  the  papers,"  explained 
my  husband.  "It's — it's  all  so  ridiculous.  I've  put 
Kearney  and  two  of  his  men  on  the  job.  He's  a 
private  detective,  and  he'll  keep  busy  until  he  gets  the 
boy  back." 

Duncan  got  up  from  the  table,  rather  heavily.  He 
stood  hesitating  a  moment  and  then  stepped  closer 
to  my  chair. 

"I  know  it's  hard,"  he  said  as  he  put  a  hand  on  my 
shoulder.  "But  it'll  be  all  right.  We'll  get  your 
boy  back  for  you." 

I  didn't  speak,  because  I  knew  that  if  I  spoke  I'd 
break  down  and  make  an  idiot  of  myself.  My  hus 
band  waited,  apparently  expecting  me  to  say  some 
thing.  Then  he  took  his  hand  away. 

"I'll  get  busy  with  the  car,"  he  said  with  a  forced 
matter-of-factness,  "and  let  you  know  when  there's 
any  news.  I've  wired  Buckhorn  and  sent  word  to 
Casa  Grande — and  we  ought  to  get  some  news  from 
there." 

But  there  was  no  news.  The  afternoon  dragged 
away  and  the  house  seemed  like  a  tomb.  And  at  five 


340  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

o'clock  I  did  what  I  had  wanted  to  do  for  six  long 
hours.  I  sent  off  a  forty-seven  word  telegram  to 
Peter  Ketley,  telling  him  what  had  happened. .  .  . 

Duncan  came  back,  at  seven  o'clock,  to  get  one  of 
the  new  photographs  of  Dinkie  and  Lossie  for  identi 
fication  purposes.  They  had  rounded  up  a  small  boy 
at  Morley  and  Kearney  was  motoring  out  to  investi 
gate.  We'd  know  by  midnight. .  .  . 

It  is  well  after  midnight,  and  Duncan  has  just 
had  a  phone-message  from  Morley.  The  little  chap 
they  had  rounded  up  was  a  Barnado  boy  fired  with 
a  sudden  ambition  to  join  his  uncle  in  the  gold-fields 
of  Australia.  Somewhere,  in  the  blackness  of  this 
big  night,  my  homeless  Dinkie  is  wandering  un 
guarded  and  alone. 


Friday  the  Twenty-Ninth 

I  HAVE  had  no  word  from  Peter.  .  .  .  I've  had  no 
news  to  end  the  ache  that  pins  me  like  a  spear-head 
to  the  wall  of  hopelessness.  Duncan,  I  know,  is  doing 
all  he  can.  But  there  is  so  little  to  do.  And  this 
world  of  ours,  after  all,  is  such  a  terrifyingly  big  one. 


Vfl 


Saturday  the  Thirtieth 

I  WAS  called  to  the  phone  before  breakfast  this 
morning  and  it  was  the  blessed  voice  of  Peter  I  heard 
from  the  other  end  of  the  wire.  My  telegram  had 
got  out  to  him  from  Buckhorn  a  day  late.  But  he 
had  no  definite  news  for  me.  He  was  quite  fixed  in 
his  belief,  however,  that  Dinkie  would  be  bobbing  up 
at  his  old  home  in  a  day  or  two. 

"The  boy  will  travel  this  way,"  he  assured  me. 
"He's  bound  to  do  that.  It's  as  natural  as  water 
running  down-hill!" 

Duncan  asked  me  whom  I'd  been  talking  to,  and 
I  had  to  tell  him.  His  face  clouded  and  the  familiar 
quick  look  of  resentment  came  into  his  eyes. 

"I  can't  see  what  that  Quaker's  got  to  do  with  this 
question,"  he  barked  out.  But  I  held  my  peace. 


Sunday  the  First 

I  HAVE  found  a  message  from  my  Dinkie.  I  came 
across  it  this  morning,  by  accident.  It  was  in  my 
sewing-basket,  the  basket  made  of  birch-bark  and 
stained  porcupine  quills  and  lined  with  doe-skin, 
which  I'd  once  bought  from  a  Reservation  squaw  in 
Buckhorn  with  a  tiny  papoose  on  her  back.  Duncan 
had  upbraided  me  for  passing  out  my  last  five-dollar 
bill  to  that  hungry  Nitchie,  but  the  poor  woman 
needed  it. 

My  fingers  were  shaking  as  I  unfolded  the  note. 
And  written  there  in  the  script  I  knew  so  well  I  read : 

"Darligest  Mummsey: 

I  am  going  away.  But  dont  worry  about  me  for 
I  will  be  alright.  I  couldnt  stay  Mummsey  after 
what  hapened.  Some  day  I  will  come  back  to  you. 
But  I'm  not  as  bad  as  all  that.  I'll  love  you  always 
as  much  as  ever.  I  can  take  care  for  myself  so  don't 
worry,  please.  And  please  feed  my  two  rabits  reglar 
and  tell  Benny  111  save  his  jacknife  and  rember 
every  day  I'm  rembering  you.  X  X  X  X  X  X  X 
Your  aff'cte  son, 

DINKIE." 
343 


344  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

It  seemed  like  a  voice  from  the  dead.  It  was  bitter 
sweet  consolation,  and,  in  a  way,  it  stood  redemption 
of  Dinkie  himself.  I'd  been  upbraiding  him,  in  my 
secret  heart  of  hearts,  for  his  silence  to  his  mother. 
That's  a  streak  of  his  father  in  him,  had  been  my 
first  thought,  that  unthinking  cruelty  which  didn't 
take  count  of  the  anguish  of  others.  But  he  hadn't 
forgotten  me.  Whatever  happens,  I  have  at  least 
this  assuaging  secret  message  from  my  son.  And 
some  day  he'll  come  back  to  me.  "Ye  winna  leave  me 
for  a',  laddie?"  I  keep  saying,  in  the  language  of  old 
Whinstane  Sandy.  And  my  mind  goes  back,  almost 
six  years  at  a  bound,  to  the  time  he  was  lost  on  the 
prairie.  That  time,  I  tell  myself,  God  was  good  to 
me.  And  surely  He  will  be  good  to  me  again! 


Tuesday  the  Third 

WE  still  have  no  single  word  of  our  laddie.  .  .  . 
They  all  tell  me  not  to  worry.  But  how  can  a  mother 
keep  from  worrying?  I  had  rather  an  awful  night 
mare  last  night,  dreaming  that  Dinkie  was  trying  to 
climb  the  stone  wall  about  our  place.  He  kept  falling 
back  with  bleeding  fingers,  and  he  kept  calling  and 
calling  for  his  mother.  Without  being  quite  awake 
I  went  down  to  the  door  in  my  night-gown,  and 
opened  it,  and  called  out  into  the  darkness :  "Is  any 
body  there?  Is  it  you,  Dinkie?" 

My  husband  came  down  and  led  me  back  to  bed, 
with  rather  a  frightened  look  on  his  face. 

They  tell  me  not  to  worry,  but  I've  been  up  in 
Dinkie's  room  turning  over  his  things  and  wondering 
if  he's  dead,  or  if  he's  fallen  into  the  hands  of  cruel 
people  who  would  ill-use  a  child.  Or  perhaps  he  has 
been  stolen  by  Indians,  and  will  come  back  to  me  with 
a  morose  and  sullen  mind,  and  with  scars  on  his 
body.  .  .  . 


345 


Thursday  the  Ftfth 

WHAT  a  terrible  thing  is  loneliness.  The  floors  of 
Hell,  I'm  sure,  are  paved  with  lonesome  hearts.  Day 
by  day  I  wait  and  long  for  my  laddie.  Always,  at 
the  back  of  my  brain,  is  that  big  want.  Day  by  day 
I  brood  about  him  and  night  by  night  I  dream  of  him. 
I  turn  over  his  old  playthings  and  his  books,  and  my 
throat  gets  tight.  I  stare  at  the  faded  old  snap 
shots  of  him,  and  my  heart  turns  to  lead.  I  imagine 
I  hear  his  voice,  just  outside  the  door,  or  just  beyond 
a  bend  in  the  road,  and  a  two-bladed  sword  of  pain 
pushes  slowly  through  my  breast-bone.  Dear  old 
Lossie  comes  twice  a  day,  and  does  her  best  to  cheer 
me  up.  And  Gershom  has  offered  to  give  up  his 
school  and  join  in  the  search.  Peter  Ketley,  he  tells 
me,  has  been  on  the  road  for  a  week,  in  a  car  covered 
with  mud  and  clothes  that  have  never  come  off. 


346 


Friday  the  Sixth 

THERE  is  no  news  of  my  Dinkie.  And  that,  I 
remind  myself,  is  the  only  matter  that  counts. 

Lois  Murchison  drove  up  to-day  in  her  hateful  big 
car.  She  did  not  find  me  a  very  agreeable  hostess, 
I'm  afraid,  but  curled  up  like  a  nonchalant  green 
snake  in  one  of  my  armchairs  and  started  to  smoke 
and  talk.  She  asked  where  Duncan  was  and  I  had 
to  explain  that  he'd  been  called  out  to  the  mines  on 
imperative  business.  And  that  started  her  going  on 
the  mines.  Duncan,  she  said,  should  clean  up  half 
a  million  before  he  was  through  with  that  deal.  He 
had  been  very  successful. 

"But  don't  you  feel,  my  dear,"  she  went  on  with 
quiet  venom  in  her  voice,  "that  a  great  deal  of  his 
success  has  depended  on  that  bandy-legged  little  she- 
secretary  of  his  ?" 

"Is  she  that  wonderful?"  I  asked,  trying  to  seem 
less  at  sea  than  I  was. 

"She's  certainly  wonderful  to  him !"  announced  the 
woman  known  as  Slinkie.  And  having  driven  that 

347 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

poisoned  dart  well  into  the  flesh,  she  was  content  to 
drop  her  cigarette-end  into  the  ash-receiver,  reach  for 
her  blue-fox  furs,  and  announce  that  she'd  have  to 
be  toddling  on  to  the  hair-dresser's. 

Lois  Murchison's  implication,  at  that  moment, 
didn't  bother  me  much,  for  I  had  bigger  troubles  to 
occupy  my  thoughts.  But  the  more  I  dwell  on  it, 
the  more  I  find  myself  disturbed  in  spirit.  I  resent 
the  idea  of  being  upset  by  a  wicked-tongued  woman. 
She  has,  however,  raised  a  ghost  which  will  have  to 
be  laid.  To-morrow  I  intend  to  go  down  to  my  hus 
band's  office  and  see  his  secretary,  "to  inspect  the 
whaup,"  as  Whinnie  would  express  it,  for  I  find 
myself  becoming  more  and  more  interested  in  her 
wonderfulness.  .  .  .  Peter  sent  me  a  hurried  line  or 
two  to-day,  telling  me  to  sit  tight  as  he  thought  he'd 
have  news  for  me  before  the  week  was  out. 

I  suspect  him  of  trying  to  trick  me  into  some  for 
lorn  new  lease  of  hope.  But  I  have  pinned  my  faith 
to  Peter — and  I  know  he  would  not  trifle  with  any 
thing  so  sacred  as  mother-love. 


Saturday  the  Seventh 

THERE  is  no  news  of  my  Dinkie.  .  .  .  But  there  is 
news  of  another  nature. 

Between  ten  and  eleven  this  morning  I  had  Hilton 
motor  me  down  to  Duncan's  office  in  Eighth  Avenue. 
It  struck  me  as  odd,  at  first,  that  I  had  never  been 
there  before.  But  Duncan,  I  remembered,  had  never 
asked  me,  the  domestic  fly,  to  step  into  his  spider's 
parlor  of  commerce.  And  I  found  a  ridiculous 
timidity  creeping  over  me  as  I  went  up  in  the  ele 
vator,  and  found  the  door-number,  and  saw  myself 
confronted  by  a  cadaverous  urchin  in  horn-rimmed 
specs,  who  thrust  a  paper-covered  novel  behind  his 
chair-back  and  asked  me  what  I  wanted.  So  I  asked 
him  if  this  was  Mr.  McKail's  office. 

"Sure,"  he  said  in  the  established  vernacular  of 
the  West. 

"What  is  your  name,  little  boy?"  I  inquired, 
with  the  sternest  brand  of  condescension  I  could  com 
mand. 

The  young  monkey  drew  himself  up  at  that  and 
349 


350  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

flushed  angrily.  "Oh,  I  don't  know  as  I'm  so  little," 
he  observed,  regarding  me  with  a  narrowing  eye  as 
I  stepped  unbidden  beyond  the  sacred  portals. 

"Where  will  I  find  Mr.  McKail's  secretary?"  I 
asked,  noticing  the  door  in  the  stained-wood  partition 
with  "Private"  on  its  frosted  glass.  The  youth 
nodded  his  head  toward  the  door  in  question  and 
crossed  to  a  desk  where  he  proceeded  languidly  to 
affix  postage-stamps  to  a  small  pile  of  envelopes. 

I  hesitated  for  a  moment,  as  though  there  was 
something  epochal  in  the  air,  as  though  I  was  making 
a  step  which  might  mean  a  great  deal  to  me.  And 
then  I  stepped  over  to  the  door  and  opened  it. 

I  saw  a  young  woman  seated  at  a  flat-topped  desk, 
with  a  gold-banded  fountain-pen  in  her  fingers,  check 
ing  over  a  column  of  figures.  She  checked  carefully 
on  to  the  end  of  her  column,  and  then  she  raised  her 
head  and  looked  at  me. 

Her  face  stood  out  with  singular  distinctness,  in 
the  strong  side-light  from  the  office-window.  And 
the  woman  seated  at  the  flat-topped  desk  was  Alsina 
Teeswater. 

I  don't  know  how  long  I  stood  there  without  speak 
ing.  But  I  could  see  the  color  slowly  mount  and 
recede  on  Alsina  Teeswater's  face.  She  put  down 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  351 

her  fountain-pen,  with  much  deliberation,  and  sat 
upright  in  her  chair,  with  her  barricaded  eyes  every 
moment  of  the  time  on  my  face. 

"So  this  has  started  again?"  I  finally  said,  in  little 
more  than  a  whisper. 

I  could  see  the  girl's  lips  harden.  I  could  see  her 
fortifying  herself  behind  an  entrenchment  of  quietly 
marshaled  belligerency. 

"It  has  never  stopped,  Mrs.  McKail,"  she  said  in 
an  equally  low  voice,  but  with  the  courage  of  utter 
desperation. 

It  took  some  time,  apparently,  for  that  declara 
tion  to  filter  through  to  my  brain.  Everything 
seemed  suddenly  out  of  focus ;  and  it  was  hard  to  re 
adjust  vision  to  the  newer  order  of  things.  But  I  was 
calmer,  under  the  circumstances,  than  I  expected  to  be. 

"I'm  glad  I  understand,"  I  finally  admitted. 

The  woman  at  the  desk  seemed  puzzled.  Then  she 
looked  from  me  to  her  column  of  figures  and  from  her 
column  of  figures  to  the  huddled  roofs  and  walls  of 
the  city  and  the  greening  foot-hills  and  the  solemn 
white  crowns  of  the  Rockies  behind  them. 

"Are  you  quite  sure,  Mrs.  McKail,  that  you  do 
understand?"  she  asked  at  last,  with  just  a  touch  of 
challenge  in  the  question. 


352  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"Isn't  it  quite  simple  now?"  I  demanded. 

She  found  the  courage  to  face  me  again. 

"I  don't  think  this  sort  of  thing  is  ever  simple," 
she  replied,  with  much  more  emotion  than  I  had  ex 
pected  of  her. 

"But  it's  at  least  clear  how  it  must  end,"  I  found 
the  courage  to  point  out  to  her. 

"Is  that  clear  to  you?"  demanded  the  woman  who 
was  stepping  into  my  shoes.  It  seemed  odd,  at  the 
moment,  that  I  should  feel  vaguely  sorry  for  her. 

"Perhaps  you  might  make  it  clearer,"  I  prompted. 

"I'd  rather  Duncan  did  that,"  she  replied,  using 
my  husband's  first  name,  obviously,  without  knowing 
she  had  done  so. 

"Wouldn't  it  be  fairer — for  the  two  of  us — now? 
Wouldn't  it  be  cleaner?"  I  rather  tremulously  asked 
of  her. 

She  nodded  and  stared  down  at  the  sheet  covered 
with  small  columns  of  figures. 

"I  don't  know  whether  you  know  it  or  not,"  she 
said  with  a  studied  sort  of  quietness,  "but  last  week 
Mr.  McKail  began  making  arrangements  to  establish 
a  residence  in  Nevada.  He  will  have  to  live  there,  of 
course,  for  at  least  six  months,  perhaps  even  longer." 

I    could    feel   this    sinking    in,    like    water    going 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  353 

through  blotting-paper.  The  woman  at  the  desk 
must  have  misinterpreted  my  silence,  for  she  was 
moved  to  say,  in  a  heavier  effort  at  self-defense,  "He 
knew,  of  course,  that  you  cared  for  some  one  else." 

I  looked  at  her,  as  though  she  were  a  thousand 
miles  away.  I  stood  there  impressed  by  the  utter 
inadequacy  of  speech.  And  the  thing  that  puzzled 
me  was  that  there  was  an  air  of  honesty  about  the 
woman.  She  still  so  desperately  clung  to  her  self- 
respect  that  she  wanted  me  to  understand  both  her 
predicament  and  her  motives.  I  could  hear  her  ex 
plaining  that  my  husband  had  no  intention  of  going 
to  Reno,  but  would  live  in  Virginia  City,  where  he 
was  taking  up  some  actual  mining  interests.  Such 
things  were  not  pleasant,  of  course.  But  this  one 
could  be  put  through  without  difficulty.  Mr.  McKail 
had  been  assured  of  that. 

I  tried  to  pull  myself  together,  wondering  why  I 
should  so  suddenly  feel  like  a  marked  woman,  a 
pariah  of  the  prairies,  as  friendless  and  alone  as  a 
leper.  Then  I  thought  of  my  children.  And  that 
cleared  my  head,  like  a  wind  sweeping  clean  a  smoky 
room. 

"But  a  case  has  to  be  made  out,"  I  began.  "It 
would  have  to  be  proved  that  I " 


354  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"There  will  be  no  difficulty  on  that  point,  Mrs 
McKail,"  went  on  the  other  woman  as  I  came  to  a 
stop.     "Provided  the  suit  is  not  opposed." 

The  significance  of  that  quietly  uttered  phrase  did 
not  escape  me.  Our  glances  met  and  locked. 

"There  are  the  children,"  I  reminded  her.  And 
she  looked  a  very  commercialized  young  lady  as  she 
sat  confronting  me  across  her  many  columns  of 
figures. 

"There  should  be  no  difficulty  there — provided  the 
suit  is  not  opposed,"  she  repeated  with  the  air  of  a 
physician  confronted  by  a  hypochondriacal  patient. 

"The  children  are  mine,"  I  rather  foolishly  pro 
claimed,  with  my  first  touch  of  passion. 

"The  children  are  yours,"  she  admitted.  And 
about  her  hung  an  air  of  authority,  of  cool  reserve, 
which  I  couldn't  help  resenting. 

"That  is  very  generous  of  you,"  I  admitted,  not 
without  ironic  intent. 

She  smiled  rather  sadly  as  she  sat  looking  at  me. 

"It's  something  that  doesn't  rest  with  either  of 
us,"  she  said  with  the  suspicion  of  a  quaver  in  her 
voice.  And  she,  I  suddenly  remembered,  might  some 
day  sit  eating  her  pot  of  honey  on  a  grave.  I  real 
ized,  too,  that  very  little  was  to  be  gained  by  pro- 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  355 

longing  that  strangest  of  interviews.  I  wanted 
quietude  in  which  to  think  things  over.  I  wanted  to 
go  back  to  my  cell  like  a  prisoner  and  brood  over 
my  sentence.  .  .  . 

And  I  have  thought  things  over.  I  at  last  see  the 
light.  From  this  day  forward  there  shall  be  no 
vacillating.  I  am  going  back  to  Casa  Grande. 

I  have  always  hated  this  house;  I  have  always 
hated  everything  about  the  place,  without  having  the 
courage  to  admit  it.  I  have  done  my  part,  I  have 
made  my  effort,  and  it  was  a  wasted  effort.  I  wasn't 
even  given  a  chance.  And  now  I  shall  gather  my 
things  together  and  go  back  to  my  home,  to  the  only 
home  that  remains  to  me.  I  shall  still  have  my  kid 
dies.  I  shall  have  my  Poppsy  and —  But  sharp  as  an 
arrow-head  the  memory  of  my  lost  boy  strikes  into 
my  heart.  My  Dinkie  is  gone.  I  no  longer  have  him 
to  make  what  is  left  of  my  life  endurable. .  .  . 

It  is  raining  to-night,  I  notice,  steadily  and  dis 
mally.  It  is  a  dark  night,  outside,  for  lost  chil 
dren.  .  .  . 

Duncan  has  just  come  home,  wet  and  muddy,  and 
gone  up  to  his  room.  The  gray-faced  solemnity  with 
which  he  strode  past  me  makes  me  feel  sure  that  he 
has  been  conversing  with  his  lady-love.  But  what 


356  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

difference  does  it  make?  What  difference  does  any 
thing  make?  In  the  matter  of  women,  I  have  just 
remembered,  what  may  be  one  man's  meat  is  another 
man's  poison.  But  I  can't  understand  these  reversible 
people,  like  house-rugs,  who  can  pretend  to  love  two 
ways  at  once.  ...  I  only  know  one  man,  in  all  the 
wide  world,  who  has  not  shattered  my  faith  in  his 
kind.  He  is  one  of  those  neck-or-nothing  men  who 
never  change. 

There  are  many  ranchers,  out  in  this  country,  who 
keep  what  they  call  a  blizzard-line.  It's  a  rope  that 
stretches  in  winter  from  their  house-door  to  their 
shed  or  their  stable,  a  rope  that  keeps  them  from  get 
ting  lost  when  a  blizzard  is  raging.  Peter,  I  know, 
has  been  my  blizzard-line.  And  in  some  way,  please 
God,  he  will  yet  lead  me  back  to  warmth.  He  is  him 
self  out  there  in  the  cold,  accepting  it,  all  the  time, 
with  the  same  quiet  fortitude  that  a  Polar  bear 
might.  But  he  will  thole  through,  in  the  end.  For 
with  all  his  roughness  he  can  be  unexpectedly  adroit. 
Whinstane  Sandy  once  told  me  something  he  had 
learned  about  Polar  bears  in  his  old  Yukon  days: 
with  all  their  heaviness,  they  can  go  where  a  dog 
daren't  venture.  If  need  be,  they  can  flatten  out  and 
slide  over  a  sheet  of  ice  too  thin  to  support  a  running 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  357 

dog.  And  the  drift-ice  may  be  widening,  but  I  refuse 
to  give  up  my  hope  of  hope.  "Let  the  mother  go," 
as  the  Good  Book  says,  "that  it  may  be  well  with 
thee!"  .  .  . 

I  have  just  remembered  that  I  tried  to  shoot  my 
husband  once.  He  may  make  use  of  that,  when  he 
gets  down  to  Virginia  City.  It  might,  in  fact,  help 
things  along  very  materially.  And  Susie's  eyes  will 
probably  pop  out,  when  she  reads  it  in  a  San  Fran 
cisco  paper. .  .  . 

I've  thought  of  so  many  clever  things  I  should  have 
said  to  Alsina  Teeswater.  As  I  look  back,  I  find  it 
was  the  other  lady  who  did  about  all  the  talking. 
There  were  old  ulcerations  to  be  cleared  away,  of 
course,  and  I  let  her  talk  about  the  same  as  you  let 
a  dentist  work  with  his  fingers  in  your  mouth.  .  .  . 
But  now  I  must  go  up  and  make  sure  my  Poppsy  is 
safely  tucked  in.  I  have  just  opened  the  door  and 
looked  out.  It  is  storming  wretchedly.  God  pity 
any  little  boys  who  are  abroad  on  such  a  night ! 


Two  Hours  Later 

It  is  well  past  midnight.  But  there  is  no  sleep  this 
night  for  Chaddie  McKail.  I  am  too  happy  to  sleep. 
I  am  too  happy  to  act  sane.  For  my  boy  is  safe. 
Peter  has  found  my  Dinkie! 

I  was  called  to  the  telephone,  a  little  after  eleven, 
but  couldn't  hear  well  on  the  up-stairs  extension,  so 
I  went  to  the  instrument  down-stairs,  where  the 
operator  told  me  it  was  long-distance,  from  Buck- 
horn.  So  I  listened,  with  my  heart  in  my  mouth.  But 
all  I  could  get  was  a  buzz  and  crackle  and  an  occa 
sional  ghostly  word.  It  was  the  storm,  I  suppose. 
Then  I  heard  Peter's  voice,  thin  and  faint  and  far 
away,  but  most  unmistakably  Peter's  voice. 

"Can  you  hear  me  now?"  he  said,  like  a  man  speak 
ing  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 

"Yes,"  I  called  back.    "What  is  it?" 

"Get  ready  for  good  news,"  said  that  thin  but 
valorous  voice  that  seemed  to  be  speaking  from  the 
tip-top  mountains  of  Mars.  But  the  crackling  and 
burring  cut  us  off  again.  Then  something  must  have 

358 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  359 

happened  to  the  line,  or  we  must  have  been  switched 
to  a  better  circuit.  For,  the  next  moment,  Peter's 
voice  seemed  almost  in  the  next  room.  It  seemed  to 
come  closer  at  a  bound,  like  a  shore-line  when  you 
look  at  it  through  a  telescope. 

"Is  that  any  better?"  he  asked  through  his  miles 
and  miles  of  rain-swept  blackness. 

"Yes,  I  can  hear  you  plainly  now,"  I  told  him. 

"Ah,  yes,  that  is  better,"  he  acknowledged.  "And 
everything  else  is,  too,  my  dear.  For  I've  found  your 
Dinkie  and " 

"You've  found  Dinkie?"  I  gasped. 

"I  have,  thank  God.     And  he's  safe  and  sound!" 

"Where?"  I  demanded. 

"Fast  asleep  at  Alabama  Ranch." 

"Is  he  all  right?" 

"As  fit  as  a  fiddle — all  he  wants  is  sleep." 

"Oh,  Peter!"  It  was  foolish.  But  it  was  all  I 
could  say  for  a  full  minute.  For  my  boy  was  alive, 
and  safe.  My  laddie  had  been  found  by  Peter — by 
good  old  Peter,  who  never,  in  the  time  of  need,  was 
known  to  fail  me. 

"Where  are  you  now?"  I  asked,  when  reason  was 
once  more  on  her  throne. 

"At  Buckhorn,"  answered  Peter. 


360  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"And  you  went  all  that  way  through  the  mud  and 
rain,  just  to  tell  me?"  I  said. 

"I  had  to,  or  I'd  blow  up !"  acknowledged  Peter. 
"And  now  I'd  like  to  know  what  you  want  me  to  do." 

"I  want  you  to  come  and  get  me,  Peter,"  I  said 
slowly  and  distinctly  over  the  wire. 

There  was  a  silence  of  several  seconds. 

"Do  you  understand  what  that  means?"  he  finally 
demanded.  His  voice,  I  noticed,  had  become  suddenly 
solemn. 

"Yes,  Peter,  I  understand,"  I  told  him.  "Please 
come  and  get  me !"  And  again  the  silence  was  so  pro 
longed  that  I  had  to  cut  in  and  ask:  "Are  you 
there?" 

And  Peter's  voice  answered  "Yes." 

"Then  you'll  come?"  I  exacted,  determined  to  burn 
all  my  bridges  behind  me. 

"I'll  be  there  on  Monday,"  said  Peter,  with  quiet 
decision.  "I'll  be  there  with  Tithonus  and  Tumble- 
Weed  and  the  old  prairie-schooner.  And  we'll  all 
trek  home  together!" 

"Skookum!"  I  said  with  altogether  unbecoming 
levity. 

I  patted  the  telephone  instrument  as  I  hung  up  the 
receiver.  Then  I  sat  staring  at  it  in  a  brown  study. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  361 

Then  I  went  careening  up-stairs  and  woke  Poppsy 
out  of  a  sound  sleep  and  hugged  her  until  her  bones 
were  ready  to  crack  and  told  her  that  our  Dinkie  had 
been  found  again.  And  Poppsy,  not  being  quite  able 
to  get  it  through  her  sleepy  little  head,  promptly 
began  to  bawl.  But  there  was  little  to  bawl  over,  once 

O  * 

she  was  thoroughly  awake.  And  then  I  went  careen 
ing  down  to  the  telephone  again,  and  called  up 
Lossie's  boarding-house,  and  had  her  landlady  root 
the  poor  girl  out  of  bed,  and  heard  her  break  down 
and  have  a  little  cry  when  I  told  her  our  Dinkie  had 
been  found.  And  the  first  thing  she  asked  me,  when 
she  was  able  to  talk  again,  was  if  Gershom  Binks  had 
been  told  of  the  good  news.  And  I  had  to  acknowl 
edge  that  I  hadn't  even  thought  of  poor  old  Gershom, 
but  that  Peter  Ketley  would  surely  have  passed  the 
good  word  on  to  Casa  Grande,  for  Peter  always 
seemed  to  think  of  the  right  thing. 

And  then  I  remembered  about  Duncan.  For  Dun 
can,  whatever  he  may  have  been,  was  still  the  boy's 
father.  And  he  must  be  told.  It  was  my  duty  to  tell 
him.  So  once  more  I  climbed  the  stairs,  but  this 
time  more  slowly.  I  had  to  wait  a  full  minute  before 
I  found  the.  courage,  I  don't  know  why,  to  knock 
on  Duncan's  bedroom  door. 


362  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

I  knocked  twice  before  any  answer  came. 

"What  is  it?"  asked  the  familiar  sleepy  bass — and 
I  realized  what  gulfs  yawned  between  us  when  my 
husband  on  one  side  of  that  closed  door  could  be 
lying  lost  in  slumber  and  I  on  the  other  side  of  it 
could  find  life  doing  such  unparalleled  things  to  me. 
I  felt  for  him  as  a  girl  home,  tired  from  her  first 
dance,  feels  for  a  young  brother  asleep  beside  a 
Noah's  Ark. 

"What  is  it?"  I  heard  Duncan's  voice  repeating 
from  the  bed. 

"It's  me,"  I  rather  weakly  proclaimed. 

"What  has  happened?"  was  the  question  that  came 
after  a  moment's  silence. 

I  leaned  with  my  face  against  the  painted  door- 
panel.  It  was  smooth  and  cool  and  pleasant  to  press 
one's  skin  against. 

"They've  found  Dinkie,"  I  said.  I  could  hear  the 
squeak  of  springs  as  my  husband  sat  up  in  bed. 

"Is  he  all  right?" 

"Yes,  he's  all  right,"  I  said  with  a  great  sigh.  And 
I  listened  for  an  answering  sigh  from  the  other  side 
of  the  door. 

But  instead  of  that  Duncan's  voice  asked :  "Where 
ia  he?" 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  363 

"At  Alabama  Ranch,"  I  said,  without  realizing 
what  that  acknowledgment  meant.  And  again  a  brief 
period  of  silence  intervened. 

"Who  found  him?"  asked  my  husband,  in  a  hard 
ened  voice. 

"Peter  Ketley,"  I  said,  in  as  collected  a  voice  as  I 
could  manage.  And  this  time  the  significance  of  the 
silence  did  not  escape  me. 

"Then  your  cup  of  happiness  ought  to  be  full,"  I 
heard  the  voice  on  the  other  side  of  the  door  remark 
with  heavy  deliberateness.  I  stood  there  with  my 
face  leaning  against  the  cool  panel. 

"It  is,"  I  said  with  a  quiet  audacity  which  sur 
prised  me  almost  as  much  as  it  must  have  surprised 
the  man  on  the  bed  a  million  miles  away  from  me. 


Sunday  the  Eighth 

How  different  is  life  from  what  the  fictioneers 
would  paint  it !  How  hopelessly  mixed-up  and 
macaronic,  how  undignified  in  what  ought  to  be  its 
big  moments  and  how  pompous  in  so  many  of  its 
pettinesses ! 

I  told  my  husband  to-day  that  Poppsy  and  I  were 
going  back  to  Casa  Grande.  And  that,  surely,  ought 
to  have  been  the  Big  Moment  in  the  career  of  an 
unloved  invertebrate.  But  the  situation  declined  to 
take  off,  as  the  airmen  say. 

"I  guess  that  means  it's  about  time  we  got  un 
scrambled,"  the  man  I  had  once  married  and  lived 
with  quietly  remarked. 

"Wasn't  that  your  intention?"  I  just  as  quietly 
inquired. 

"It's  what  I've  had  forced  on  me,"  he  retorted, 
with  a  protective  hardening  of  .the  Holbein-Astron 
omer  jaw -line. 

"I'm  sorry,"  was  all  I  could  find  to  say. 

He  turned  to  the  window  and  stared  out  at  his  big 
364 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  365 

white  iron  fountain  set  in  his  terraced  lawn  behind 
his  endless  cobble-stone  walls.  I  couldn't  tell,  of 
course,  what  he  was  thinking  about.  But  I  myself 
was  thinking  of  the  past,  the  irrecoverable  past,  the 
irredeemable  past,  the  singing  years  of  my  womanly 
youth  that  seemed  to  be  sealed  in  a  lowered  coffin  on 
which  the  sheltering  earth  would  soon  be  heaped,  on 
which  the  first  clods  were  already  dropping  with  hol 
low  sounds.  We  each  seemed  afraid  to  look  the  other 
full  in  the  eyes.  So  we  armored  ourselves,  as  poor 
mortals  must  do,  in  the  helmets  of  pretended  diffi 
dence  and  the  breast-plates  of  impersonality. 

"How  are  you  going  back?"  my  husband  finally 
inquired.  Whatever  ghosts  it  had  been  necessary  to 
lay,  I  could  see,  he  had  by  this  time  laid.  He  no 
longer  needed  to  stare  out  at  the  white  iron  fountain 
of  which  he  was  so  proud. 

"I've  sent  for  the  prairie-schooner,"  I  told  him. 

His  flush  of  anger  rather  startled  me. 

"Doesn't  that  impress  you  as  rather  cheaply 
theatrical?"  he  demanded. 

"I  fancy  it  will  be  very  comfortable,"  I  told  him, 
without  looking  up.  I'd  apparently  been  attributing 
to  him  feelings  which,  after  all,  were  not  so  desolating 
as  I  might  have  wished. 


366  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"Every  one  to  his  own  taste,"  he  observed  as  he 
called  rather  sharply  to  Tokudo  to  bring  him  his 
humidor.  Then  he  took  out  a  cigar  and  lighted  it 
and  ordered  the  car.  And  that  was  the  lee  and  the 
long  of  it.  That  was  the  way  we  faced  our  Great 
Divide,  our  forked  trail  that  veered  off  East  and 
West  into  infinity ! 


Thursday  the  Eleventh 

THE  trek  is  over.  And  it  was  not  one  of  triumph. 
For  we  find  ourselves,  sometimes,  in  deeper  water 
than  we  imagine.  Then  we  have  to  choke  and  gasp 
for  a  while  before  we  can  get  our  breath  back. 

Peter,  in  the  first  place,  didn't  appear  with  the 
prairie-schooner.  He  left  that  to  come  later  in  the 
day,  with  Whinnie  and  Struthers.  He  appeared  quite 
early  Monday  morning,  with  fire  in  his  eye,  and  with 
a  demand  to  see  the  master  of  the  house.  Heaven 
knows  what  he  had  heard,  or  how  he  had  heard  it. 
But  the  two  men  were  having  it  hot  and  heavy  when 
I  felt  it  was  about  time  for  me  to  step  into  the  room. 
To  be  quite  frank,  I  had  not  expected  any  such  out 
burst  from  Duncan.  I  knew  his  feelings  were  not 
involved,  and  where  you  have  a  vacuum  it  is  impos 
sible,  of  course,  to  have  an  explosion.  I  interpreted 
his  resentment  as  a  show  of  opposition  to  save  his 
face.  But  I  was  wrong.  And  I  was  wrong  about 
Peter.  That  mild-eyed  man  is  no  plaster  saint.  He 
can  fight,  if  he's  goaded  into  it,  and  fight  like  a  bull- 

367 


368  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

dog.  He  was  saying  a  few  plain  truths  to  Duncan, 
when  I  stepped  into  the  room,  a  few  plain  truths 
which  took  the  color  out  of  the  Dour  Man's  face  and 
made  him  shake  with  anger. 

"For  two  cents,"  Duncan  was  rather  childishly 
shouting  at  him,  "I'd  fill  you  full  of  lead !" 

"Try  it!"  said  Peter,  who  wasn't  any  too  steady 
himself.  "Try  it,  and  you'd  at  least  end  up  with 
doing  something  in  the  open !" 

Duncan  studied  him,  like  a  prize-fighter  studying 
his  waiting  opponent. 

"You're  a  cheap  actor,"  he  finally  announced. 
"This  sort  of  thing  isn't  settled  that  way,  and  you 
know  it." 

"And  it's  not  going  to  be  settled  the  way  you 
intended,"  announced  Peter  Ketley. 

"What  do  you  know  about  my  intentions?"  de 
manded  Duncan. 

"Much  more  than  you  imagine,"  retorted  Peter. 
"I've  got  your  record,  McKail,  and  I've  had  it  for 
three  years.  I've  stood  by,  until  now;  but  the  time 
has  come  when  I'm  going  to  have  a  hand  in  this  thing. 
And  you're  not  going  to  get  your  freedom  by  drag 
ging  this  woman's  name  through  a  divorce-court.  If 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  369 

there's  any  dragging  to  be  done,  it's  your  carcass 
that's  going  to  be  tied  to  the  tail-board !" 

Duncan  stood  studying  him  with  a  face  cheese- 
colored  with  hate. 

"Aren't  you  rather  double-crossing  yourself?"  he 
mocked. 

"I'm  not  thinking  about  myself,"  said  Peter. 

"Then  what's  prompting  all  the  heroics?"  de 
manded  Duncan. 

"For  two  years  and  more,  McKail,"  Peter  cried 
out  as  he  stepped  closer  to  the  other  man,  "you've 
given  this  woman  a  pretty  good  working  idea  of  hell. 
And  I've  seen  enough  of  it.  It's  going  to  end.  It's 
got  to  end.  But  it's  not  going  to  end  the  way  you've 
so  neatly  figured  out !" 

"Then  how  do  you  propose  to  end  it?"  Duncan 
demanded,  with  a  sort  of  second-wind  of  composure. 
But  his  face  was  still  colorless. 

"You'll  see  when  the  time  comes,"  retorted  Peter. 

"You  may  have  rather  a  long  wait,"  taunted 
Duncan. 

"I  have  waited  a  number  of  years,"  answered  the 
other  man,  with  a  dignity  which  sent  a  small  thrill  up 
and  down  my  spine.  "And  I  can  wait  a  number  of 
years  more  if  I  have  to." 


370  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"We  all  knew,  of  course,  that  you  were  waiting," 
sneered  my  husband. 

Peter  turned  to  fling  back  an  answer  to  that,  but 
I  stepped  between  them.  I  was  tired  of  being  haggled 
over,  like  marked-down  goods  on  a  bargain-counter. 
I  was  tired  of  being  a  passive  agent  before  forces 
that  seemed  stripping  me  of  my  last  shred  of  dignity. 
I  was  tired  of  the  shoddiness  of  the  entire  shoddy 
situation. 

And  I  told  them  so.  I  told  them  I'd  no  intention  of 
being  bargained  over,  and  that  I'd  had  rather  enough 
of  men  for  the  rest  of  my  natural  life,  and  if  Duncan 
wanted  his  freedom  he  was  at  liberty  to  take  it  with 
out  the  slightest  opposition  from  me.  And  I  said  a 
number  of  other  things,  which  I  have  no  wish  either 
to  remember  or  record.  But  it  resulted  in  Duncan 
staring  at  me  in  a  resurrection-plant  sort  of  way, 
and  in  Peter  rather  dolorously  taking  his  departure. 
I  wanted  to  call  him  back,  but  I  couldn't  carpenter 
together  any  satisfactory  excuse  for  his  coming  back, 
and  I  couldn't  see  any  use  in  it. 

So  instead  of  journeying  happily  homeward  in  the 
cavernous  old  prairie-schooner,  I  felt  a  bit  ridiculous 
as  Tokudo  impassively  carried  our  belongings  out  to 
the  canvas-covered  wagon  and  Poppsy  and  I  climbed 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  371 

aboard.  The  good  citizens  of  American  Hill  stared 
after  us  as  we  rumbled  down  through  the  neatly 
boulevarded  streets,  and  I  felt  suspiciously  like  a 
gypsy-queen  who'd  been  politely  requested  by  the 
local  constabulary  to  move  on. 

It  wasn't  until  we  reached  the  open  country  that 
my  spirits  revived.  Then  the  prairie  seemed  to  reach 
out  its  hand  to  me  and  give  me  peace.  We  camped, 
that  first  night,  in  the  sheltering  arm  of  a  little  coulee 
threaded  by  a  tiny  stream.  We  cooked  bacon  and 
eggs  and  coffee  while  Whinnie  out-spanned  his  team 
and  put  up  his  tent. 

I  sat  on  an  oat-sack,  after  supper,  with  Poppsy 
between  my  knees,  watching  the  evening  stars  come 
out.  They  were  worlds,  I  remembered,  some  of  them 
worlds  perhaps  with  sorrowing  men  and  women  on 
them.  And  they  seemed  very  lonely  and  far-away 
worlds,  until  I  heard  the  drowsy  voice  of  my  Poppsy 
say  up  through  the  dusk:  "In  two  days  more, 
Mummy,  we'll  be  back  to  Dinkie,  won't  we?" 

And  there  was  much,  I  remembered,  for  which  a 
mother  should  be  thankful. 


Dark,  and  true,  and  tender  is  the  North.  Heaven 
bless  the  rhymster  who  first  penned  those  words. 
Spring  is  stealing  back  to  the  prairie,  and  our  world 
is  a  world  of  beauty.  The  sky  to-day  is  windrowed 
with  flat-bottomed  cumulus-clouds,  tier  beyond  tier 
above  a  level  plane  of  light,  marking  off  the  infinite 
distance  like  receding  mile-stones  on  a  world  turned 
over  on  its  back.  Occasionally  the  outstretched  head 
of  a  wild  duck,  pumping  north  with  a  black  throb  of 
wings,  melts  away  to  a  speck  in  the  opaline  air.  Back 
among  the  muskeg  reeds  the  waders  are  courting  and 
chattering,  and  early  this  morning  I  heard  the 
plaintive  winnowing  call-note  of  the  Wilson  snipe,  and 
later  the  punk-e-lunk  love-cry  of  a  bittern  to  his 
mate.  There's  an  eagle  planing  in  lazy  circles  high 
in  the  air,  even  now,  putting  a  soft-pedal  on  the  noise 
of  the  coots  and  grebes  as  he  circles  over  their  rush- 
lined  cabarets.  And  somewhere  out  on  the  range  a 
bull  is  lowing.  It  is  the  season  of  love  and  the  season 
of  happiness.  Dinkie  and  Poppsy  and  I  are  going 

372 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  373 

out  to  gather  prairie-crocuses.  They  are  thick  now 
in  the  prairie-sod,  soft  blue  and  lavender  and  some 
times  mauve.  We  must  dance  to  the  vernal  saraband 
while  we  can :  Spring  is  so  short  in  this  norland  coun 
try  of  ours.  It  comes  late.  But  as  Peter  says,  A 
late  spring  never  deceives. .  .  . 

I  thought  I  had  offended  Peter  for  life.  But  when 
he  appeared  late  this  afternoon  and  I  asked  him  why 
he  had  kept  away  from  me,  he  said  these  first  few 
days  naturally  belonged  to  Dinkie  and  he'd  been  busy 
studying  marsh-birds.  He  looked  rather  rumpled 
and  muddy,  and  impressed  me  as  a  man  sadly  in  need 
of  a  woman  to  look  after  his  things. 

"Let's  ride,"  said  Peter.     "I  want  to  talk  to  you." 

I  was  afraid  of  that  talk,  but  I  was  more  afraid 
something  might  happen  to  interfere  with  it.  So  I 
changed  into  my  old  riding-duds  and  put  on  my 
weather-stained  old  sombrero  and  we  saddled  Buntie 
and  Laughing-Gas  and  went  loping  off  over  the  sun- 
washed  prairie  with  our  shadows  behind  us. 

We  rode  a  long  way  before  Peter  said  anything.  I 
wanted  to  be  happy,  but  I  wasn't  quite  able  to  be.  I 
tried  to  think  of  neither  the  past  nor  the  future,  but 
there  were  too  many  ghosts  of  other  days  loping 
along  the  trail  beside  us. 


374  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  Peter  finally  in 
quired. 

"About  what?"  I  temporized  as  he  pulled  up  beside 
me. 

"About  everything,"  he  ungenerously  responded. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  do,  Peter,"  I  had  to  ac 
knowledge.  "I'm  like  a  barrel  without  hoops.  I 
want  to  stick  together,  but  one  more  thump  will 
surely  send  me  to  pieces  !" 

"Then  why  not  get  the  hoops  around?"  suggested 
Peter. 

"But  where  will  I  get  the  hoops  ?"  I  asked. 

"Here,"  he  said.  He  was,  I  noticed,  holding  out 
his  arms.  And  I  laughed,  even  though  my  heart  was 
heavy. 

"Men  have  been  a  great  disappointment  to  me, 
Peter,"  I  said  with  a  shake  of  my  sombrero. 

"Try  me,"  suggested  Peter. 

But  still  again  I  had  to  shake  my  head. 

"That  wouldn't  be  fair,  Peter,"  I  told  him.  "I 
can't  spoil  your  life  to  see  what's  left  of  my  own 
patched  up." 

"Then  you're  going  to  spoil  two  of  'em !"  he 
promptly  asserted. 

"But  I  don't  believe  in  that  sort  of  thing,"  I  did 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  375 

my  best  to  explain  to  him.  "I've  had  my  innings,  and 
/Vi  out.  I've  a  one-way  heart,  the  same  as  a  one 
way  street.  I  don't  think  there's  anything  in  the 
world  more  odious  than  promiscuity.  That's  a  big 
word,  but  it  stands  for  an  even  bigger  offense  against 
God.  I've  always  said  I  intended  to  be  a  single-track 
woman." 

"But  your  track's  blown  up,"  contended  Peter. 

"Then  I'll  have  to  lay  me  a  new  one,"  I  said  with 
a  fine  show  of  assurance. 

"And  do  you  know  where  it  will  lead?"  he  de 
manded. 

"Where?"  I  asked. 

"Straight  to  me,"  he  said  as  he  studied  me  with 
eyes  that  were  so  quiet  and  kind  I  could  feel  a  flutter 
of  my  heart-wings. 

But  still  again  I  shook  my  head. 

"That  would  be  bringing  you  nothing  but  a 
withered  up  old  has-been,"  I  said  with  a  mock-wail 
of  misery. 

And  Peter  actually  laughed  at  that. 

"It'll  be  a  good  ten  years  before  you've  even  grown 
up,"  he  retorted.  "And  another  twenty  years  before 
you've  really  settled  down!" 


376  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"You're  saying  I'll  never  have  sense,"  I  objected. 
"And  I  know  you're  right." 

"That's  what  I  love  about  you,"  averred  Peter. 

"What  you  love  about  me?"  I  demanded. 

"Yes,"  he  said  with  his  patient  old  smile,  "your 
imperishable  youthfulness,  your  eternal  never-ending 
eternity-defying  golden-tinted  girlishness !" 

A  flute  began  to  play  in  my  heart.  And  I  knew 
that  like  Ulysses's  men  I  would  have  to  close  my  ears 
to  it.  But  it's  easier  to  row  past  an  island  than  to 
run  away  from  your  own  heart. 

"I  know  it's  a  lie,  Peter,  but  I  love  you  for  saying 
it.  It  makes  me  want  to  hug  you,  and  it  makes  me 
want  to  pirouette,  if  I  wasn't  on  horseback.  It 
makes  my  heart  sing.  But  it's  only  the  singing  of 
one  lonely  little  chickadee  in  the  middle  of  a  terribly 
big  pile  of  ruins.  For  that's  all  my  life  can  be  now, 
just  a  hopeless  smash-up.  And  you're  cut  out  for 
something  better  than  a  wrecking-car  for  the  rest  of 
your  days." 

"No,  no,"  protested  Peter.  "It's  you  who've  got 
to  save  me." 

"Save  you?"  I  echoed. 

"You've  got  to  give  me  something  to  live  for,  or 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  377 

I'll  just  rust  away  in  the  ditch  and  never  get  back  to 
the  rails  again." 

"Peter!"  I  cried. 

"What?"  he  asked. 

"You're  not  playing  fair.  You're  trying  to  make 
me  pity  you." 

"Well,  don't  you?"  demanded  Peter. 

"I  would  if  I  saw  you  sacrificing  your  life  for  a 
woman  with  a  crazy-quilt  past." 

"I'm  not  thinking  of  the  past,"  asserted  Peter, 
"I'm  thinking  of  the  future." 

"That's  just  it,"  I  tried  to  explain.  "I'll  have  to 
face  that  future  with  a  clouded  name.  I'll  be  a 
divorced  woman.  Ugh !  I  always  thought  of  divorced 
women  as  something  you  wouldn't  quite  care  to  sit 
next  to  at  table.  I  hate  divorce." 

"I'm  a  Quaker  myself,"  acknowledged  Peter.  "But 
I  occasionally  think  of  what  Cobbett  once  said:  'I 
don't  much  like  weasels.  Yet  I  hate  rats.  There 
fore  I  say  success  to  the  weasels !' ' 

"I  don't  see  what  weasels  have  to  do  with  it,"  I 
complained. 

"Putting  one's  house  in  order  again  may  some 
times  be  as  beneficent  as  surgery,"  contended  Peter. 

"And  sometimes  as  painful,"  I  added. 


378  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

"Yet  there's  no  mistake  like  not  cleaning  up  old 
mistakes." 

"But  I  hate  it,"  I  told  him.  "It  all  seems  so — so 
cheap." 

"On  the  contrary,"  corrected  Peter,  "it's  rather 
costly."  He  pulled  up  across  my  path  and  made  me 
come  to  a  stop.  "My  dear,"  he  said,  very  solemn 
again,  "I  know  the  stuff  you're  made  of.  I  know 
you've  got  to  climb  to  the  light  by  a  path  of  your 
own  choosing.  And  you  have  to  see  the  light  with 
your  own  eyes.  But  I'm  willing  to  wait.  I  have 
waited,  a  very  long  time.  But  there's  one  fact  you*ve 
got  to  face :  I  love  you  too  much  ever  to  dream  of 
giving  you  up." 

I  don't  think  either  of  us  moved  for  a  full  moment. 
The  flute  was  singing  so  loud  in  my  heart  that  I  was 
afraid  of  myself.  And,  woman-like,  I  backed  away 
from  the  thing  I  wanted. 

"It's  not  me,  Peter,  I  must  remember  now.  It's  my 
bairns.  I've  two  bairns  to  bring  up." 

"I've  got  the  three  of  you  to  bring  up,"  maintained 
Peter.  And  that  made  us  both  sit  silent  for  another 
moment  or  two. 

"It's  not  that  simple,"  I  finally  said,  though  Peter 
smiled  guardedly  at  my  ghost  of  a  smile. 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  379 

"It  would  be  if  you  cared  for  me  as  much  as  Dinkie 
does,"  he  said  with  quite  unnecessary  solemnity. 

"Oh,  Peter,  I  do,  I  do,"  I  cried  out  as  the  memory 
of  all  I  owed  him  surged  mistily  through  my  mind. 
"But  a  gray  hair  is  something  you  can't  joke  away. 
And  I've  got  five  of  them,  right  here  over  my  left  ear. 
I  found  them,  months  ago.  And  they're  there  to 
stay !" 

"How  about  my  bald  spot?"  demanded  my  op 
pressor  and  my  deliverer  rolled  into  one. 

"What's  a  bald  spot  compared  to  a  bob-cat  of  a 
temper  like  mine?"  I  challenged,  remembering  how 
I'd  once  heard  a  revolver-hammer  snap  in  my  hus 
band's  face. 

"But  it's  your  spirit  I  like,"  maintained  the  un 
ruffled  Peter. 

"You  wouldn't  always,"  I  reminded  him. 

Yet  he  merely  looked  at  me  with  his  trust-me-and- 
test-me  expression. 

"I'll  chance  it!"  he  said,  after  a  quite  contented 
moment  or  two  of  meditative  silence. 

"But  don't  you  see,"  I  went  forlornly  arguing  on, 
"it  mustn't  be  a  chance.  That's  something  people  of 
our  age  can  never  afford  to  take." 

And  Peter,  at  that,  for  some  reason  I  couldn't 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

fathom,  began  to  wag  his  head.  He  did  it  slowly  and 
lugubriously,  like  a  man  who  inspects  a  road  he  has 
no  liking  for.  But  at  the  same  time,  apparently,  he 
was  finding  it  hard  to  tuck  away  a  small  smile  of 
triumph. 

"Then  we  must  never  see  each  other  again,"  he 
solemnly  asserted. 

"Peter !"  I  cried. 

"I  must  go  away,  at  once,"  he  meditatively  ob 
served. 

"Peter!"  I  said  again,  with  the  flute  turning  into 
a  pair  of  ice-tongs  that  clamped  into  the  corners  of 
my  heart. 

"Far,  far  away,"  he  continued  as  he  studiously 
avoided  my  eye.  "For  there  will  be  safety  now  only 
in  flight." 

"Safety  from  what?"  I  demanded. 

"From  you,"  retorted  Peter. 

"But  what  will  happen  to  me,  if  you  do  that?"  I 
heard  my  own  voice  asking  as  Buntie  started  to  paw 
the  prairie-floor  and  I  did  my  level  best  to  fight  down 
the  black  waves  of  desolation  that  were  half-drowning 
me.  "What'll  there  be  to  hold  me  up,  when  you're 
the  only  man  in  all  this  world  who  can  keep  my  barrel 


THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD  381 

of  happiness  from  going  slap-bang  to  pieces? 
What ?" 

"Verboten!"  interrupted  Peter.  But  that  solemn- 
soft  smile  of  his  gathered  me  in  and  covered  me,  very 
much  as  the  rumpled  feathers  of  a  mother-bird  cover 
her  young,  her  crazily  twittering  and  crazily  wander 
ing  young  who  never  know  their  own  mind. 

"What'll  happen  to  me,"  I  went  desperately  on, 
"when  you're  the  only  man  alive  who  understands  this 
crazy  old  heart  of  mine,  when  you've  taught  me  to 
hitch  the  last  of  my  hope  on  the  one  unselfish  man 
I've  ever  known?" 

This  seemed  to  trouble  Peter.  But  only  remotely, 
as  the  lack  of  grammar  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  might 
affect  a  Holy  Roller.  He  insisted,  above  all  things, 
on  being  judicial. 

"Then  I'll  have  to  come  back,  I  suppose,"  he  finally 
admitted,  "for  Dinkie's  sake." 

"Why  for  Dinkie's  sake?"  I  asked. 

"Because  some  day,  my  dear,  our  Dinkie  is  going 
to  be  a  great  man.  And  I  want  to  have  a  hand  in 
fashioning  that  greatness." 

I  sat  looking  at  the  red  ball  of  the  sun  slipping 
down  behind  the  shoulder  of  the  world.  A  wind  came 
out  of  the  North,  cool  and  sweet  and  balsamic  with 


382  THE     PRAIRIE     CHILD 

hope.     I  heard  a  loon  cry.     And  then  the  earth  was 
still  again. 

"We'll  be  waiting,"  I  said,  with  a  tear  of  happiness 
tickling  the  bridge  of  my  nose.  And  then,  so  that 
Peter  might  not  see  still  another  loon  crying,  I  swung 
Buntie  sharply  about  on  the  trail.  And  we  rode 
home,  side  by  side,  through  the  twilight. 


THE  END 


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